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THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE 
IN  LITERATURE 


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THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE 
IN  LITERATURE 


BY 

ALBERT  MORDELL 

AUTHOR  OF  "the  SHIFTING  OF   LITERARY  VALUES,' 

"DANTE  AND   OTHER  WANING  CLASSICS," 

ETC. 


BONI      AND      LIVERIGHT 

NewYork  1919 


Copyright,  1919, 
Ly  BONI  &  LiVERIGHT,  iNC, 


First  printing.   May,  1919 
Second  printing,  July,  1919 


Printed  in  ihe  U.  S.  A. 


p/vi 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


CHAPTER 

I  Introduction i 

II  Eroticism  in  Life 20 

III  Dreams  and  Literature 31 

IV  The  GIdipus  Complex  and  the  Brother  and 

Sister  Complex 51 

V  Tee  Author  Always  Unconsciously  in  His 

Work 63 

VI  Unconscious  Consolatory  Mechanisms  in  Au- 
thorship       83 

VII  Projection,  Villain  Portrayals  and  Cynicism 

as  Work  of  the  Unconscious 97 

VlII  Genius  as  a  Product  of  the  Unconscious  .     .   107 

IX  Literary  Emotions  AND  THE  Neuroses  .     .     .    iiS 

X  The  Infantile  Lo\^  Life  of  the  Author  and 

ITS  Sublimations 132 

XI  Sexual  Symbolism  IN  Literature      .     .     .     .150 
XII  Cannibalism:  The  Atreus  Legend     .      .     .      .172 

XIII  Psychoanalysis  an-d  Liter,\ry  Criticism      .     .179 

XIV  Keats'  Personal  Love  Poems 199 

XV  Shelley's  Personal  Love  Poems 209 

XVI  Psychoanalytic  Study  of  Edgar  Allan  PoE       .   220 

XVII  The  Ideas  of  Lafcadio  IIearn 237 

XVIII  Conclusion 244 


CHAPTER  I 

INTRODUCTION 


This  work  is  an  endeavour  to  apply  some  of  the  meth- 
ods of  psychoanalysis  to  literature.  It  attempts  to  read 
closely  between  the  lines  of  an  author's  works.  It  ap- 
plies some  principles  in  interpreting  literature  with  a 
scrutiny  hitherto  scarcely  deemed  permissible.  Only 
such  suggestions  have  been  set  down  whose  application 
has  been  rendered  fairly  unimpeachable  by  science  and 
experience. 

In  studying  literature  thus,  I  aim  to  trace  a  writer's 
books  back  to  the  outward  and  inner  events  of  his  life 
and  to  reveal  his  unconscious,  or  that  part  of  his  psychic 
life  of  which  he  is  unaware.  I  try  to  show  that  un- 
suspected emotions  of  the  writer  have  entered  into  his 
literary  productions,  that  events  he  had  apparently  for- 
gotten have  guided  his  pen.  In  every  book  there  is 
much  of  the  author's  unconscious  which  can  be  dis- 
covered by  the  critic  and  psychologist  who  apply  a  few 
and  well  tested  and  infallible  principles. 

This  unconscious  is  largely  identical  with  the  mental 
love  fantasies  in  our  present  and  past  life.  Since  the 
terms  "unconscious"  and  "erotic"  are  almost  synony- 
mous, any  serious  study  of  literature  which  is  concerned 


2        THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

with  the  unconscious  must  deal  impartially  with  erot- 
icism. 

Every  author  reveals  more  than  he  intended.  Works 
of  the  imagination  open  up  to  the  reader  hidden  vistas 
in  man's  inner  life  just  as  dreams  do.  As  the  psycho- 
analyst recognises  that  dreams  are  the  realised  repressed 
wishes  of  the  unconscious,  so  the  critic  discovers  in 
literary  performances  ideal  pictures  inspired  by  past 
repressions  in  the  authors'  lives.  And  just  as  anxiety- 
dreams  spring  largely  from  the  anxieties  of  waking  life, 
so  literature  describing  human  sorrows  in  general  takes 
its  cue  from  the  personal  griefs  of  the  author. 

A  literary  work  is  no  longer  regarded  as  a  sort  of 
objective  product  unrelated  to  its  creator,  written  only 
by  compliance  with  certain  rules.  It  is  a  personal  ex- 
pression and  represents  the  whole  man  behind  it.  His 
present  and  past  have  gone  into  the  making  of  it  and 
it  records  his  secret  aspirations  and  most  intimate  feel- 
ings; it  is  the  outcropping  of  his  struggles  and  disap- 
pointments. It  is  the  outlet  of  his  emotions,  freely  flow- 
ing forth  even  though  he  has  sought  to  stem  their  flux. 
It  dates  from  his  apparently  forgotten  infantile  life. 

We  know  that  a  man's  reading,  his  early  education, 
his  contact  with  the  world,  the  fortunes  and  vicissitudes 
of  his  life,  have  all  combined  to  influence  his  artistic 
work.  We  have  learned  that  hereditary  influences,  the 
nature  of  his  relations  to  his  parents,  his  infantile  re- 
pressions, his  youthful  love  affairs,  his  daily  occupa- 
tions, his  physical  powers  or  failings,  enter  into  the 
colouring  and  directing  of  his  ideas  and  emotions,  and  will 
stamp  any  artistic  product  that  he  may  undertake. 
Thus  with  a  man's  literary  work  before  us  and  with  a 
few  clues,  we  are  able  to  reconstruct  his  emotional  and 
intellectual  life,  and  guess  v/ith  reasonable  certainty  at 


INTRODUCTION  3 

many  of  the  events  in  his  career.  George  Brandes  has 
been  able  to  build  up  a  life  of  Shakespeare  almost  from 
the  plays  alone.  As  he  said,  if  we  have  about  forty- 
five  works  by  a  writer,  and  we  still  cannot  find  out  much 
about  his  life,  it  must  be  our  own  fault. 

Again  we  may  deduce  what  kind  of  literary  work 
would  have  been  the  result  if  there  are  given  to  us  not 
only  the  hereditary  antecedents  and  biographical  data 
of  an  author,  but  a  full  account  of  his  day  dreams,  ambi- 
tions, frailties,  disillusionments,  of  his  favourite  reading, 
intellectual  influences,  love  affairs  and  relations  to  his 
parents,  relatives  and  friends.  I  do  not  think  it  would 
be  difficult  for  us  to  deduce  from  the  facts  we  have  of 
Dante's  life  that  he  naturally  would  have  given  us  a 
work  of  the  nature  of  the  Divine  Comedy. 

Literature  is  a  personal  voice  the  source  of  which  can 
be  traced  to  the  unconscious. 

But  an  author  draws  not  only  on  the  past  in  his  own 
life,  but  on  the  past  psychic  history  of  the  human  family. 
Unconscious  race  memories  are  revived  by  him  in  his 
writing;  his  productions  are  influenced  by  most  primi- 
tive ideas  and  emotions,  though  he  may  not  be  aware 
what  they  are.  Yet  they  emerge  from  his  pen;  for 
the  methods  of  thought  and  ways  of  feeling  of  our  early 
ancestors  still  rule  us.  Nor  is  the  idea  of  unconscious 
race  memories  idle  speculation  or  fanciful  theorising. 
Just  as  surely  as  we  carry  in  ourselves  the  physical  marks 
of  our  forefathers  of  which  each  individual  has  millions, 
so  undoubtedly  we  must  have  inherited  their  mental 
and  emotional  characteristics.  The  manner  and  nature 
of  the  lives  of  those  who  preceded  us  have  never  been 
entirely  eliminated  from  our  unconscious.  We  have  even 
the  most  bestial  instincts  in  a  rudimentary  stage,  and 
these  are  revived,  to  our  surprise,  not  only  in  our  dreams 


4        THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

but  in  our  waking  thoughts  and  also  occasionally  in 
our  conduct.  We  carry  the  whole  world's  past  under 
our  skins.  And  there  is  a  sediment  of  that  primitive 
life  in  many  of  our  books,  without  the  author  being 
aware  of  the  fact. 

Thus  a  deterministic  influence  prevails  in  literature. 
A  book  is  not  an  accident.  The  nature  of  its  con- 
tents depends  not  only  on  hereditary  influences,  nor, 
as  Taine  thought,  on  climate,  country  and  environment, 
alone,  but  on  the  nature  of  the  repressions  the  author's 
emotions  have  experienced.  The  impulses  that  created 
it  are  largely  unconscious,  and  the  only  conscious  traces 
in  it  are  those  in  the  art  of  composition.  Hence  the 
ancient  idea  of  poetic  inspiration  cannot  be  relegated 
to  limbo,  for  it  plays  a  decided  part  in  determining  the 
psychical  features  of  the  work.  Inspiration  finds  its  ma- 
terial in  the  unconscious.  When  the  writer  is  inspired, 
he  is  eager  to  express  ideas  and  feelings  that  have  been 
formed  by  some  event,  though  he  cannot  trace  their  ori- 
gin, for  he  speaks  out  of  the  soul  of  a  buried  humanity. 

There  is  no  form  or  species  of  literature  that  may 
not  be  interpreted  by  psychoanalytic  methods.  Be  the 
author  ever  so  objective,  no  matter  how  much  he  has 
sought  to  make  his  personality  intangible  and  elusive, 
there  are  means,  with  the  aid  of  clues,  of  opening  up 
the  barred  gates  of  his  soul.  Men  like  Flaubert  and 
Merimee,  who  believed  in  the  impersonal  and  objective 
theory  of  art  and  who  strove  deliberately  to  conceal  their 
personalities,  failed  in  doing  so.  Their  presence  is  re- 
vealed in  their  stories;  they  could  not  hold  themselves 
aloof.  It  is  true  we  have  been  aided  by  external  evi- 
dence in  learning  what  m.ethods  they  employed  to  ren- 
der themselves  impersonal;  the  real  INIerimee  and  Flau- 
bert, however,  were  made  to  emerge  by  the  help  of  their 


INTRODUCTION  5 

published  personal  letters.  It  matters  not  whether  the 
author  writes  realistic  or  romantic  fiction,  autobiograph- 
ical or  historical  tales,  lyric  or  epic  poems,  dramas  or 
essays,  his  unconscious  is  there,  in  some  degree. 

But  in  a  field  which  is  largely  new,  it  is  best  to  take 
those  works  or  species  of  writing  where  the  existence  of 
the  unconscious  does  not  elude  our  efforts  to  detect  it. 
Therefore,  much  will  be  said  in  this  volume  of  works 
where  there  is  no  question  that  the  author  is  talking  from 
his  own  experiences,  in  his  own  person,  or  where  he  is 
using  some  character  as  a  vehicle  for  his  own  point  of 
view.  Such  works  include  lyric  poetry  which  is  usually 
the  personal  expression  of  the  love  emotions  of  the 
singer.  Bums,  Byron,  Shelley,  Keats  and  Swinburne 
have  left  us  records  of  their  love  affairs  in  their  great 
lyric  poems.  Most  of  these  were  inspired  by  frustration 
of  love,  and  were  the  results  of  actual  experiences.  And 
though  much  is  said  in  them,  other  facts  may  be  deduced. 

It  is  also  a  fact  that  nearly  every  great  novelist  has 
given  us  an  intimate  though  disguised  account  of  him- 
self in  at  least  one  novel  (note  David  Copper  field  and 
Pendennis  as  examples),  while  other  writers  have  drawn 
themselves  in  almost  every  character  they  portrayed, 
Goethe  and  Byron  being  two  instances.  An  author  gives 
us  the  best  insight  into  himself  when  he  speaks  frankly 
in  his  o^NTi  person.  His  records  are  then  intensely  in- 
teresting and  informative  about  his  unconscious.  But 
even  if  the  author  identifies  himself  with  a  fictitious 
character  he  speaks  hardly  less  firmly. 


n 

Very  important  is  the  consideration  of  some  of  the 
literature  vv'here  authentic  dreams  or  dreams  having  the 


6        THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

appearance  of  authenticity  have  been  recorded.  The 
connection  between  poetry  and  dreams  has  often  been 
noted.  The  poet  projects  an  ideal  and  imaginary  world 
just  as  the  dreamer  does.  He  builds  Utopias  and  para- 
dises and  celestial  cities.  He  sees  visions  and  constructs 
allegories.  I  have  interpreted,  according  to  the  methods 
of  Freud,  some  dream  literature  like  Kipling's  Brush- 
wood Boy  and  Gautier's  Arria  Marcella.  These  tales 
prove  most  astoundingly  the  correctness  of  Freud's 
theories  about  dreams  being  the  fulfilment  in  our  sleep 
of  unconscious  wishes  of  our  daily  life. 

A  literary  production,  even  if  no  dream  is  recorded 
therein,  is  still  a  dream;  that  of  the  author.  It  rep- 
resents the  fulfilment  of  his  unconscious  wishes,  or 
registers  a  complaint  because  they  are  not  fulfilled.  Like 
the  dream,  it  is  formed  of  remnants  of  the  past  psychic 
life  of  the  author,  and  is  coloured  by  recent  events  and 
images.  Freud  in  interpreting  the  dreams  of  his  neuro- 
tic patients,  learns  the  substance,  the  manifest  content 
of  the  dream,  as  he  calls  it,  and  inquires  about  the  events 
of  the  preceding  days  and  he  evokes  all  the  associations 
which  occur  to  the  patients.  He  learns  something  of 
their  lives  and  finally  after  a  course  of  psychoanalytic 
treatment  frequently  cures  them  of  their  neuroses  by 
making  them  aware  of  the  unconscious  repressions  or 
fixations  from  which  they  suffer.  These  are  removed 
and  the  resistances  are  broken  down.  As  critics,  we 
may  interpret  a  book  in  the  same  way.  A  literary  work 
stands  in  the  same  relation  to  the  author  as  the 
dream  to  the  patient.  The  writer  has,  however,  cured 
himself  of  his  emotional  anxiety  by  giving  vent  to  his  feel- 
ings in  his  book.  He  has  been  his  own  doctor.  The 
critic  may  see  how  this  has  been  accomplished  and  point 
out  the  unconscious  elements  that  the  writer  has  brought 


INTRODUCTION  7 

forth  in  his  book  out  of  his  own  soul.  The  critic,  not 
being  able,  like  the  physician  and  his  patient,  to  ques- 
tion the  author  in  person,  must  avail  himself,  in  addition 
to  the  internal  evidence  of  the  literary  product  itself,  of 
all  the  data  that  have  been  collected  from  the  author's 
confessions  and  letters,  from  the  accounts  of  friends, 
etc.  After  having  studied  these  in  connection  with  the 
writing  in  question,  he  learns  the  author's  unconscious. 
Shelley's  Epipsychidion,  for  instance,  is  an  autobiograph- 
ical poem,  Shelley's  dream  of  love,  and  can  be  fully  fol- 
lowed only  when  the  reader  has  acquainted  himself  with 
the  history  of  Shelley's  marriages  and  love  affairs. 

I  have  interpreted  a  dream  of  Stevenson  recorded  in 
his  A  Chapter  on  Dreams,  and  have  found  in  it  a  full 
confirmation  of  the  Freudian  theory  of  dreams.  Steven- 
son, recounting  at  length  a  dream  of  his  own,  tells  us 
unwittingly  more  about  the  misunderstanding  that  ex- 
isted between  him  and  his  father  and  the  difficulties 
he  encountered  before  he  married  (since  the  object  of 
his  affection  was  separated  but  not  yet  divorced  from 
her  first  husband)  than  his  biography  does.  When  the 
essay  and  the  biography  are  taken  together,  we  see  the 
testimony  before  us  as  to  why  Stevenson  dreamed  this 
dream. 

William  Cowper's  poem  on  the  receipt  of  his  mother's 
picture  is  a  remarkable  document  in  support  of  one  of 
the  tenets  that  are  among  the  pillars  of  Freud's  system, 
the  theory  of  the  (Edipus  Complex.  As  is  well  known, 
Freud  traced  the  nucleus  of  the  psychoneuroses  to  an 
overattachment  that  the  patient  had  for  the  parent  of 
the  opposite  sex,  a  fixation  which  was  very  strong  in 
infancy  but  from  the  influence  of  which  there  had  never 
been  a  healthy  liberation.    This  fixation  which  is  often 


8        THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

unconscious  plants  the  seeds  of  future  neuroses.  The 
victim's  entire  life,  even  his  love  affairs,  are  interfered 
with  by  this  attachment.  Any  one  who  knows  his  Freud 
and  has  read  Cowper's  poem  can  see  in  it  the  cause  of 
most  of  the  latter's  unhappiness  and  most  likely  his 
insanity.  His  mother  died  when  he  was  a  child,  and 
many  years  later  he  was  writing  to  her,  almost  with 
passion. 

Both  Stevenson's  essay  and  Cowper's  poem  are  self- 
explanatory  to  the  disciple  of  Freud.  If  we  had  known 
nothing  about  the  authors'  lives,  we  would  have  seen 
beyond  doubt  that  in  the  one  case  there  was  in  actual 
life  a  hostility  to  the  father,  revealed  by  the  dreamer's 
murdering  him;  and  in  the  other  case  we  would  have 
known  that  a  hysterical  overattachment  to  the  mother 
existed  and  that  the  writer's  life  would  have  been  neu- 
rotic and  that  he  might  possibly  experience  an  attach- 
ment to  some  older  woman  who  replaced  the  mother. 

Further,  just  as  there  are  typical  dreams  from  which 
alone  the  psychoanalyst  can  judge  the  wishes  of  his 
subject  without  asking  him  any  questions  about  him- 
self, so  there  are  literary  compositions  wherefrom  we 
can  learn  much  of  the  author's  unconscious,  without 
probing  into  the  facts  of  his  life.  Typical  dreams  in 
which  certain  objects  like  serpents  or  boxes  appear,  or 
in  which  the  dreamer  is  represented  as  flying,  swimming 
or  climbing,  have  a  sexual  significance.  Freud  has  shown 
this  after  having  investigated  thousands  of  such  dreams 
and  noted  the  symbolic  language  and  customs  of  our 
ancestors.  Literary  works  also  speak  per  se  for  the  au- 
thor when  they  abound  in  similar  symbolical  images. 


INTRODUCTION 


m 


We  now  come  to  another  species  of  literature  that  is 
important  for  the  psychoanalytic  critic.  This  is  a  class 
of  writing  which  delineates  primaeval  and  immoral  emo- 
tions. It  often  shows  us  the  conflicts  between  savage 
emotions  still  lurking  in  man,  and  the  demands  of  civili- 
sation. Either  force  may  triumph,  but  the  real  interest 
of  these  works  is  that  they  show  the  old  cave  dweller 
is  not  yet  dead  within  us,  and  that  civilisation  is  achieved 
gradually  by  suppressing  these  old  emotions;  sometimes 
these  needs  are  strong  and  must  not  be  extirpated  too 
suddenly;  in  fact  in  some  specific  cases  must  be  granted 
satisfaction.  Among  some  of  the  interesting  books  in 
recent  years  have  been  tales  where  primitive  emotions 
have  been  depicted  as  conquering  their  victims.  Note 
Conrad's  Heart  of  Darkness,  where  it  is  shown  how  the 
old  barbarian  instincts  and  the  cry  of  the  forest  are  part 
of  us  and  may  be  revived  in  us.  Jack  London's  Call  of 
the  Wild  is  an  interesting  allegory  on  the  subject.  It  is 
well  known  that  we  are  descended  from  forbears  who 
were  wilder  than  the  most  savage  tribes  of  to-day.  Nat- 
urally some  of  the  emotions  they  felt  are  not  altogether 
extinct  in  us.  Civilisation  is  after  all  but  a  veneer  and 
slight  causes  may  stir  up  brutal  sensations  in  many  peo- 
ple. They  are  still  in  our  unconscious  and  form  for  the 
literary  man  very  fascinating  though  often  dangerous 
material.  Shakespeare  understood  this  when  he  drew 
Caliban. 

Poe  once  said  that  no  writer  would  dare  to  write 
truly  all  his  inner  thoughts  and  feelings,  for  the  very 
paper  would  burn  beneath  them.  What  he  meant  was 
that  all  writers,  even  the  bravest,  suppress  those  un- 


lo      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

conscious  elements  in  their  nature  that  are  related  to 
immorality,  indecency,  degeneracy,  morbidity  and  cruel- 
ty. It  may  not  be  advisable  for  writers  continually  to 
remind  the  reader  of  the  remnant  echoes  and  memories 
of  our  primitive  state,  which  have  fortunately  been 
made  quiescent  but  not  been  completely  exterminated  by 
culture.  In  the  confessions  of  criminals,  in  the  patho- 
logical disclosures  of  sexually  aberrated  people  given  to 
physicians,  in  the  records  of  atrocities  committed  in 
time  of  war,  we  have  illustrations  of  the  atavisms  of  our 
day.  Often  a  diseased  literary  man  ventures  far  in 
baring  his  soul  and  we  get  the  morbid  and  immoral  ma- 
terial that  provides  food  for  the  unhealthy. 

As  a  rule  the  author's  sense  of  propriety  and  prudence 
act  as  a  censor  for  him  and  hedge  in  his  dormant  sav- 
age feelings,  so  as  not  to  allow  them  to  find  a  direct 
voice  in  his  art.  Yet  we  can  often  pierce  through  the 
veil  and  observe  exactly  where  the  censor  has  been 
invoked  and  guess  fairly  accurately  what  has  been 
suppressed. 

Some  authors  who  relax  the  censorship  voluntarily  and 
appear  to  be  without  a  sense  of  shame,  give  us  some 
of  the  immoral  literature  which  the  world  publicly  ab- 
hors, but  which  individuals  often  delight  in  reading  in 
private.  I  do  not  refer  to  the  really  great  literature 
which  has  been  stamped  "immoral"  by  prudish  people, 
because  its  ideas  are  too  far  advanced  for  them  to  ap- 
preciate, and  are  different  from  the  conventional  morals 
of  society.  I  do  not  refer  to  the  hundreds  of  great 
works  which  give  us  true  accounts  of  the  natural  man, 
books  whose  irresistibility  cannot  be  evaded  except  by 
hypocrites.  I  do  not  include  novels  and  plays  wherein 
the  authors  have  realised  that  we  are  exerting  too  great 
a  sacrifice  upon  our  emotions  and  that  many  souls  are 


INTRODUCTION  ii 

starved  by  lack  of  normal  gratification  on  account  of 
the  harsh  exactions  of  conventional  society.  But  there 
is  a  real  immoral  (or  rather  indecent)  literature  where 
the  author  allows  his  savage  instincts  to  come  to  the 
surface  and  trespass  on  those  aspects  of  his  personality 
which  civilisation  should  have  tamed.  He  may  suffer 
from  the  vice  of  exhibitionism  and  think  he  is  frank, 
when  he  is  merely  showing  he  has  no  sense  of  shame; 
and  he  may  cater  to  a  market  merely  for  money,  in 
which  case  he  acts  like  a  mercenary  harlot.  He  may  try 
to  gratify  himself  by  sexual  abandon  in  art  because  he 
has  never  had  the  craving  for  love  satisfied  in  fife.  He 
gives  vent  to  instincts  that  are  still  ruling  him  because 
of  his  own  atavistic  or  neurotic  state.  Psychoanalytic 
literature  puts  in  a  new  light  immoral  literature,  which 
hitherto  has  been  dealt  with  from  a  moral,  and  not  a 
psychological,  point  of  view.  This  Hterature  should  be 
explained  and  its  sources  traced;  these  will  be  found  in 
the  infantile  love  life  of  the  authors.  Such  writings 
should  not  be  condemned  offhand  just  because  they  stir 
our  moral  indignation.  They  must  be  interpreted  so  that 
we  may  learn  the  nature  of  their  authors. 

I  have  also  made  a  study  of  so  repulsive  a  feature  in 
the  lives  of  our  earliest  ancestors  as  cannibalism.  It 
is  one  of  the  most  primitive  emotions.  The  discoveries 
of  archaeologists  show  that  cannibalism  prevailed  in  Eu- 
rope before  the  dawn  of  history;  Greek  plays  show  its 
early  existence  in  Greece;  and  we  know  that  it  still  pre- 
vails among  savage  tribes  to-day. 

Many  of  the  views  here  presented  will  be  strange  and 
novel  to  those  unacquainted  with  or  hostile  to  Freud's 
theories,  or  to  those  who  wish  to  ignore  the  fact  of  the 
existence  of  primitive  emotions  in  man.  The  ideas  ad- 
vanced here  will  displease  the  puritanical  opponents  of 


12      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

scientific  research.  But  it  should  be  borne  in  mind  that 
a  study  of  the  unconscious  must  necessarily  deal  with 
much  that  is  obnoxious  in  human  nature.*  A  study  of 
this  unpleasant  element  leads  to  the  attainment  of  a 
more  natural  and  moral  life.  But  we  should  also  re- 
member that  the  unconscious,  besides  containing  the 
seeds  of  crime  and  immorality,  also  is  the  soil  of  all 
those  finer  emotions  that  the  church  and  the  state  cher- 
ish. Conscience,  self-sacrifice,  moral  sense,  love,  are 
unconscious  sentiments. 

I  should  have  liked  to  treat  of  the  literature  of  me- 
tempsychosis. In  this  literature  where  people  are  de- 
picted as  remembering  past  existences,  as  in  Kipling's 
tale.  The  Finest  Story  in  the  World,  George  Sand's  Co«- 
suelo,  and  Jack  London's  The  Star  Rover,  there  may  be 
possible  avenues  to  race  memories.  Needless  to  say,  I 
do  not  believe  in  the  transmigration  of  the  individual 
soul  as  some  of  the  Greeks  and  early  Christians  did.  But 
the  Buddhistic  conception  of  metempsychosis  with  its 
doctrine  of  the  Karma,  the  scientific  theory  of  heredity, 
and  the  conception  of  psychoanalysis  are  all  dominated 
by  a  similar  idea;  this  is,  that  the  manners  of  feeling 
and  thinking  of  our  progenitors  are  exercised  by  us. 
We  carry  their  souls,  not  the  individual,  but  the  col- 
lective ones;  we  are  the  products  of  their  sins  and  vir- 
tues; we  have  all  the  idiosyncrasies,  mental  make  up, 
emotional  tendencies,  that  they  had;  we  have  stamped 
on  us  our  race,  our  nation,  our  religion.  We  cannot 
remember  isolated  events  of  past  ages,  but  the  effects 

*  The  reader  should  also  remember  that  such  fearsome 
words  as  (i)  "sex,"  (2)  "incest,"  (3)  "homosexualism," 
(4)  "sadism,"  etc.,  include  in  psychoanalysis  (i)  love,  (2) 
great  affection  between  mother  and  son,  father  and  daughter, 
brother  and  sister,  (3)  intense  friendship,  (4)  cruelty,  etc., 
respectively. 


INTRODUCTION  13 

of  happenings  then  are  registered  in  our  nervous  system. 
No  one  has  done  more  than  Hearn  to  show  this,  and  he 
is,  both  because  of  his  life  and  work,  one  of  the  fittest 
subjects  for  psychoanalytic  study.  The  only  possible 
rival  he  has  is  Edgar  Allan  Poe. 

If  any  one  wishes  to  see  an  adroit  application  of  the 
method  of  reading  between  the  lines  in  a  poem,  let  him 
read  Lafcadio  Hearn's  interpretation  of  Browning's  poem 
A  Light  Woman  in  the  Appreciations  of  Poetry.  Hearn 
had  probably  never  heard  of  Freud,  but  in  his  lecture  to 
his  class,  he  showed  that  the  unconscious  of  the  author 
and  the  character  could  be  discovered  by  probing  care- 
fully into  the  literary  work.  Hearn  tells  in  prose  Brown- 
ing's story  of  the  young  man  who  claimed  that  he  stole 
his  friend's  mistress  to  save  him,  and  on  tiring  of  her 
pretended  he  had  never  loved  her.  Hearn  shrewdly 
observes: 

"Does  any  man  in  this  world  ever  tell  the  exact  truth 
about  himself?  Probably  not.  No  man  understands 
himself  so  well  as  to  be  able  to  tell  the  exact  truth  about 
himself.  It  is  possible  that  this  man  believes  himself  to 
be  speaking  truthfully,  but  he  certainly  is  telling  a  lie, 
a  half  truth  only.  We  have  his  exact  words,  but  the 
exact  language  of  the  speaker  in  any  one  of  Browning's 
monologues  does  not  tell  the  truth,  it  only  suggests  the 
truth.  We  must  find  out  the  real  character  of  the 
person,  and  the  real  facts  of  the  case,  from  our  own 
experience  of  human  nature." 

Psychoanalysis  was  applied  to  literature  long  before 
Freud.  When  biographers  recounted  all  the  influences 
of  an  author's  life  upon  his  works,  or  probed  deeply  into 
the  real  meaning  of  his  views,  they  gave  us  psychoana- 
lytic criticism.  Great  literary  critics  like  Sainte-Beuve, 
Taine  and  George  Brandes  traced  the  tendencies  of  au- 


14      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

thors'  works  to  emotional  crises  in  their  lives.  Critics 
who  study  the  various  ways  in  which  authors  have  come 
to  draw  themselves  or  people  they  knew  in  their  books, 
are  psychoanalytic.  When  biographers  and  critics  dilate 
especially  on  the  relations  existing  between  the  writer 
and  his  mother,  and  trace  the  effects  on  the  work  of  the 
author,  they  employ  the  psychoanalytic  method.  Any 
profound  insight  into  human  nature  is  psychoanalytic, 
and  I  find  such  insight  in  Swift,  Johnson,  Hazlitt  and 
Lamb. 

It  is,  however,  Freud  who  first  gave  complete  applica- 
tion of  that  method  to  literature.  He  first  touched  on 
it  in  his  masterpiece  The  Interpretation  of  Dreams  in 
1900,  when  he  saw  the  significance  of  the  marriage  of 
CEdipus  to  his  mother  in  Sophocles's  play  CEdipus.  He 
showed  that  it  was  a  reminiscence  of  actual  incestuous 
love  that  was  practised  far  back  in  the  ages  of  barbarism, 
and  that  the  play  shows  horror  as  a  reaction  to  such  at- 
tachment to  the  mother.  The  first  treatment  of  an 
aesthetic  theme  from  the  new  point  of  psychoanalysis 
was  made  by  Freud  in  his  book  on  Wit  and  the  Uncon- 
scious in  1905.  The  first  sole  application  of  psyclio- 
analysis  to  a  work  of  literature  was  undertaken  by  him 
in  connection  with  Jensen's  novel  Gradiva  in  1907, 
where  he  shows  the  similarity  between  the  emotions  of 
the  hero  and  the  psychoneuroses.  (The  novel  and 
Freud's  essay  have  been  both  translated  into  English.)* 
Freud  also  studied  Leonardo  da  Vinci  and  showed  the 
influences  of  the  artist's  infantile  love  life  upon  his  later 
career  and  work.  Psychoanalytic  methods  have  been 
applied  to  music,  mythology,  religion,  philosophy,  phil- 
ology and  morals,  and  indeed  to  almost  every  sphere  of 
mental  activity.    Many  monographs  have  been  published 

*  Delusion  and  Dream,  Moffat,  Yard  &  Co. 


INTRODUCTION  15 

by  Freud's  disciples,  taking  up  the  relations  between  an 
author  and  his  work.  Sadger  studied  the  poets  Lenau, 
Kleist,  and  F.  K.  Meyer  and  showed  the  power  of  in- 
fantile influence.  On  this  side  of  the  ocean  little  work 
has  been  done  in  this  direction,  but  that  little  has  been 
excellent.  Professor  Ernest  Jones's  study  of  the  CEdip- 
us  Complex  in  Hamlet  {American  Journal  of  Psychology, 
January,  1910),  Dr.  Isidor  Coriat's  account  of  the  hys- 
teria of  Lady  Macbeth  and  Professor  F.  C.  Prescott's 
scholarly  essay  on  the  relation  between  poetry  and 
dreams  (Journal  of  Abnormal  Psychology,  April,  June, 
1912),  are  excellent  pioneer  works  in  psychoanalytical 
literary  criticism.* 


IV 

Freud  is  a  genius  whose  performances  astonish  one 
as  do  those  of  a  wizard.  His  revolutions  in  psychology 
are  no  less  important  than  those  of  Darwin  in  biology. 
After  his  discoveries,  literary  interpretation  cannot  re- 
main the  same.     The  points  of  difference  between  him 

*  There  are  in  English  but  few  articles  applying  psycho- 
analytic methods  to  writers  and  thinkers.  Some  of  them  are : 
Alfred  Kuttner's  "The  Artist"  in  Seven  Arts,  Feb.,  1917; 
Wilfrid  Lay's  "  'John  Barleycorn'  Under  Psychoanalysis," 
"H.  G.  Wells  and  His  Mental  Hinterland"  and  "The  Mar- 
riage Ideas  of  H.  G.  Wells"  in  The  Bookr)tan  (N.  Y.),  March, 
July  and  August,  1917,  respectively;  A.  R.  Chandler's  "Tragic 
Effects  in  Sophocles"  in  "The  Monist"  (1913)  ;  W.  J.  Karpas's 
"Socrates  in  the  Light  of  Modern  Psychology"  in  The  Journal 
of  Abnormal  Psychology,  vol.  10,  p.  185;  and  Phyllis  Blan- 
chard's  "Psychoanalytic  Study  of  Comte"  in  the  American 
Journal  of  Psychology,  April,  1918. 

Two  indispensable  articles  are  the  summaries  by  Rudolph 
Acher  and  by  Lucille  Dooley  of  "Psychoanalytic  Studies  of 
Geniuses,"  published  in  German.  The  reader  should  study 
these  articles  in  the  American  Journal  of  Psychology  for  July, 
191 1,  and  July,   1916,  respectively. 


i6     THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

and  his  disciples  Jung  and  Adler  need  not  be  touched 
on  here.    My  own  sympathies  are  with  Freud. 

The  new  method  will  help  to  explain  the  nature  and 
origin  of  literary  genius,  though  it  is  not  pretended  it 
will  create  it.  Psychoanalysis  will  show  us  the  direc- 
tion that  literary  genius  takes  and  will  explain  why 
it  proceeds  in  a  particular  path.  It  will  give  the  reasons 
why  one  author  writes  books  of  a  particular  colour  or 
tendency,  why  he  entertains  certain  ideas.  It  explains 
why  certain  plots  and  characters  are  indulged  in  by 
particular  authors.  It  claims  to  tell  why  Schopenhauer 
became  a  pessimist,  why  Wagner  dealt  with  themes  like 
the  woman  between  two  men.  In  fact  studies  of  these 
artists,  employing  Freud's  methods,  have  already  been 
published.  Graf  and  Rank  each  wrote  about  Wagner, 
and  Hitschman  has  given  us  a  monograph  on  Schopen- 
hauer. Similarly  the  critic  of  the  future  will  ex- 
plain the  fundamental  tone  of  the  works  of  writers  who 
differ  vastly  from  each  other.  We  will  see  more  clearly 
why  Byron  gave  vent  to  his  note  of  melancholy,  Keats 
to  his  passion  for  beauty.  Browning  to  his  spirit  of 
optimism,  Strindberg  to  his  misogyny,  Swift  to  his 
misanthropy,  Ibsen  to  his  moral  revolt,  Tolstoi  to  his 
religious  reaction,  Thackeray  to  his  cynicism,  and  Words- 
worth to  his  love  for  nature. 

The  author  is  more  in  his  work  than  he  suspects.  To 
illustrate:  There  is  a  theory  of  projection,  in  psychoa- 
nalysis, which  explains  to  us  that  hysterical  people  lean 
with  great  eagerness  for  moral  support  or  consolation 
on  some  actual  person  they  love  or  admire.  Often  he 
is  the  clergyman  or  physician,  at  other  times  he  is  a 
friend  or  relative.  The  same  thing  occurs  in  literature. 
The  writer  who  has  certain  theories  clings  for  support  to 
some  characters  in  history  or  fiction.     He  projects  his 


INTRODUCTION  17 

personality  on  theirs.  If  he  writes  a  biography  he 
chooses  a  type  most  like  himself  and  is  really  writing  his 
own  life.  Renan's  Life  of  Jesus  is  really  a  life  of  Renan 
and  he  makes  Jesus  have  many  qualities  he  himself 
had.  I  have  compared  Renan's  autobiography  to  his 
Life  of  Jesus  and  shown  the  resemblance  between  Renan 
and  the  Jesus  of  his  creation. 

An  author  also  identifies  himself  with  his  characters 
and  draws  unconsciously  on  himself  when  he  creates 
them.  I  have  discovered  a  personal  note  in  an  epic 
like  the  Iliad,  usually  considered  impersonal.  I  have 
deduced  that  the  master  passion  of  the  author  of  the 
Achilles-Patroclus  story  was  friendship,  and  that  he  sang 
a  private  sorrow  in  Achilles'  grief  for  Patroclus.  I  have 
been  aided  in  this  by  a  dream  of  Achilles. 

Authors  also  often  draw  their  villains  from  their  un- 
conscious. They  indulge  in  exaggeration,  disguise  and 
various  other  devices.  Balzac's  worst  villain,  the  in- 
tellectual, unmoral  Vautrin,  is  the  Dr.  Hyde  of  Balzac 
himself  let  loose  in  a  fictitious  character.  And  we  know 
Byron  was  even  accused  of  having  committed  the  crimes 
of  his  villains.  This,  however,  does  not  m.ean  that  the 
creator  of  vicious  types  himself  may  not  be  the  purest 
person  in  his  personal  life.  We  must  not  conclude  that 
actual  events  of  a  fictitious  work  have  happened  to  the 
author  himself.  And  this  brings  me  to  the  real  danger 
of  a  critical  study  of  this  kind. 

I  have  maintained  a  double  guard  over  myself  so  as 
not  to  transcend  the  danger  line.  I  have  sought  not 
to  interpret  as  a  portrait  of  the  author's  own  life,  his 
delineation  of  a  character,  when  no  reason  warrants 
such  a  conclusion.  It  is  absurd  to  conclude  that  isolated 
incidents  in  a  novel  happened  in  the  writer's  own  life.  It 
is  only  when  a  writer  harps  on  one  plot — one  motive — 


1 8      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

continually — and  in  several  works,  that  one's  suspicions 
are  aroused  that  he  is  really  writing  about  himself. 
It  is  only  when  there  is  a  genuine  ring  to  the  cry  of 
distress,  that  the  reader  suspects  that  the  work  is  more 
than  a  mere  literary  exercise.  The  early  readers  of 
Heine,  De  Musset  and  Leopardi,  saw  that  the  poets  were 
singing  about  real  sorrows.  No  one  ever  doubted  that 
Goethe,  Ibsen  and  Tolstoi  used  fictitious  characters  as 
vehicles  for  their  own  ideas,  and  that  Wilhelm  Meister, 
Brand  and  Levine  were  really  the  authors  themselves. 

No  doubt,  many  literary  men  will  be  among  the  first  to 
object  to  a  theory  of  literary  criticism  which  tends  to 
reveal  their  personalities  more  closely  to  the  public.  They 
may  claim  that  they  are  painfully  careful  to  keep  their 
own  views  and  personalities  from  the  public  eyes.  I 
do  not  think  that  anything  derogatory  to  authors  as  a 
whole  will  result  from  psychoanalytic  criticism.  They 
should  be  the  first  to  welcome  this  method.  In  fact 
the  older  writers  gain  by  the  process  of  psychoanalytic 
study.  We  become  more  liberal  and  admire  them  all 
the  more.  I  can  only  speak  from  my  own  studies  and 
say  that  my  admiration  for  the  personal  character  of 
men  like  Byron  and  Poe,  the  moral  standing  of  whom 
has  never  been  very  high  with  the  public,  has  increased 
since  my  studies  of  psychoanalysis,  and  my  appreciation 
of  their  work  has  deepened. 

The  reader's  indulgent  attention  is  invited  to  the 
pages  where  the  effect  upon  literature  of  the  sexual  in- 
fantile life  of  the  author  is  treated.  This  involves  a 
resume  of  one  of  Freud's  most  important  and  most 
abused  discoveries,  that  the  child  has  a  love  life  of  its 
own,  the  development  of  which  has  most  significant  bear- 
ing upon  his  entire  life.  More  particular  indulgence  is 
pleaded   for  the  pages  dealing  with  sex  symbolism  in 


INTRODUCTION  19 

literature.  The  critic  who  will  find  the  author  of  this 
volume  obsessed  with  sex  will  be  more  charitably  in- 
clined if  he  first  masters  Freud's  works  or  a  good  study 
and  summary  of  them  like  Dr.  Hitschman's  Freud's 
Theories  of  the  Neuroses,  Dr.  Brill's  Psychanalysis, 
Pfister's  The  Psychoanalytic  Method  or  Jones'  Papers 
on  Psychoanalysis. 

In  conclusion,  I  quote  a  passage  from  William  James 
to  show  the  significance  of  the  unconscious  in  modern 
psychology. 

"I  cannot  but  think,"  says  William  James  in  his  Vari- 
eties of  Religious  Experience  (1902),  (P.  233),  "that 
the  most  important  step  forward  that  has  occurred  in 
psychology  since  I  have  been  a  student  of  that  science 
is  the  discovery,  first  made  in  1886,  that  in  certain  ob- 
jects at  least,  there  is  not  only  the  consciousness  of  the 
ordinary  field,  with  its  usual  centre  and  margin,  but  an 
addition  thereto  in  the  shape  of  a  set  of  memories, 
thoughts  and  feelings  which  are  extra-marginal  and  out- 
side of  the  primary  consciousness  altogether,  but  yet 
must  be  classed  as  conscious  facts  of  some  sort,  able 
to  reveal  their  presence  by  unmistakable  signs.  I  call 
this  the  most  important  step  forward  because,  unlike 
the  advances  which  psychology  has  made,  this  discovery 
has  revealed  to  us  an  entirely  unsuspected  peculiarity  Xn 
the  constitution  of  human  nature." 


CHAPTER  II 

EROTICISM  IN  LIFE 


Psychology  has  in  recent  years  investigated  the 
unconscious  day  dreams  which  are  now  recognised  as 
part  of  our  imaginative  life.  No  matter  how  religious  or 
moral  we  may  be,  erotic  fancies  are  always  with  us. 
This  mental  life  has  often  been  described  in  mediaeval 
literature  in  the  accounts  of  sensuous  visions  which 
tempted  saints.  The  authors  who  aimed  at  inculcating 
moral  and  religious  lessons  thus  gave  vent  to  their  own 
erotic  fancies  in  the  alluring  and  enticing  verbal  pictures 
they  drew.  Many  instances  thus  appear  in  puritanical 
and  ascetic  literature,  of  immorality  and  exhibitionism. 

We  are  learning  to  deal  directly  with  a  phase  of  our 
lives,  whose  influence  upon  our  happiness  can  scarcely 
be  overestimated.  We  must  first  admit  the  reality  of 
the  fantasies  that  occupy  so  much  of  our  existence.  Out 
of  them  bloom  as  a  flower  the  emotions  which  are  associ- 
ated with  the  noblest  sentiments  in  human  nature — love. 
How  these  fancies  may  be  sublimated  into  higher  pur- 
poses, like  beautiful  deeds  and  works  of  art,  how  they 
may  be  directed  into  the  channels  of  love,  how  they 
may  be  partly  gratified  without  impairing  the  finer  in- 
stincts of  man,  are  problems  which  are  being  made  the 
subject  of  serious  study.    It  is  also  being  reaUsed  that 

20 


EROTICISM  IN  LIFE  21 

these  fancies  increase  in  vividness,  number  and  variety 
where,  for  economic  and  conventional  reasons,  means  of 
normal  love  life  are  cut  off.  It  is  also  being  admitted 
that  much  of  the  mental  misery  and  physical  debility 
of  many  people  is  due  to  the  absurd  asceticism  forced 
upon  us  in  sex  matters  by  our  modern  civilisation. 

We  must  learn  to  discuss,  in  a  sincere  manner,  the 
nature  and  tendencies  of  the  erotic  in  our  lives.  Scien- 
tists have  the  privilege  of  speaking  openly  on  the  sub- 
ject; many  literary  men  who  have  claimed  the  same  free- 
dom have  used  it,  however,  to  evolve  pornographic  works 
for  commercial  purposes.  Yet  no  literary  man  to-day 
would  be  permitted  to  discuss  sexual  questions  with  the 
frankness  of  Montaigne  in  his  essay  "Upon  Some  Verses 
of  Virgil." 

Let  us  examine  the  word  "erotic"  itself.  Unfortu- 
nately it  has  assumed  an  unsavoury  meaning,  although  it 
means  "related  to  love"  and  is  derived  from  the  Greek 
work  "eros" — love.  It  has  been  used  to  designate  the 
perverse  and  the  immoral  in  sex  matters;  it  has  been 
made  synonymous  with  lust,  abnormality,  excess  and 
every  unpleasant  feature  in  regard  to  sex  matters.  Pater 
once  complained  that  he  did  not  like  the  use  of  the  word 
"hedonism"  because  of  the  misapprehension  created  in 
the  minds  of  people  who  did  not  understand  Greek.  The 
same  objection  may  be  brought  against  the  use  of  the 
word  "eroticism."  Properly  speaking  all  love  poetry  is 
erotic  poetry;  in  fact  the  greatness  of  poetry  and  litera- 
ture is  its  eroticism,  for  they  are  most  true  then  to 
life,  which  is  largely  erotic.  To  call  a  great  poet  like 
Paul  Verlaine  erotic  is  a  compliment,  not  a  disparage- 
ment. Nor  is  he  nearly  as  erotic  as  the  author  of  The 
Song  of  Songs.  Since  there  is  no  word  in  English  to 
specify  love  interest  in  its  widest  sense,  we  must  cling 


22      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

to  the  use  of  the  words  "erotic"  and  "eroticism."  We 
should  restore  to  the  word  "eroticism"  its  original  and 
nobler  meaning. 

Any  literary  work  that  lays  an  emphasis  on  the  part 
played  by  love  in  our  lives  is  erotic.  Literature  could 
not  exist  without  dwelling  on  the  love  interest.  The 
stories  of  Jacob  and  Rachel,  of  Ruth,  and  of  David  and 
Uriah's  wife,  are  all  beautiful  examples  of  eroticism  in 
the  Bible. 

Man  is  averse  to  admitting  certain  facts  about  his 
mental  love  life.  People  are  often  shocked  by  the  im- 
morality of  the  dreams  which  reveal  their  unconscious 
lives.  A  man,  however,  will  often  confess  in  intimate 
circles  the  existence  of  sensuous  fancies  within  himself. 
People  show  indications  in  many  ways  of  the  parts 
played  by  the  love  and  sex  interests  in  their  mental 
lives.  Some  witness  suggestive  plays;  others  indulge  in 
telling  and  hearing  lewd  jests,  indecent  witticisms  and 
improper  stories.  Any  one  who  has  listened  to  the  con- 
versation of  men  in  the  club  or  smoker,  in  the  factory  or 
office,  in  the  bar-room  or  sitting  room,  cannot  be  blind 
to  the  fact  that  the  erotic  interests  rule  us  far  more  than 
we  wish  to  admit.  He  who  thinks  that  the  wealthy  are 
too  much  absorbed  in  accumulating  more  riches  and  the 
poor  too  much  worn  out  by  the  struggle  for  existence, 
to  be  occupied  with  erotic  fancies,  is  mistaken.  A  day 
spent  in  a  factory  or  an  evening  at  a  club  will  show  one 
that  the  millionaire  and  the  pauper  are  brothers  under 
their  skins. 

Man's  nature  is  erotic  to  its  very  foundations;  he 
was  erotic,  in  infancy,  in  his  own  way;  he  carries  with- 
in him  all  the  erotic  instincts  of  millions  of  ancestors  for 
thousands  of  years  back.  His  eroticism  extends  to  many 
sensitive  areas  of  his  body  like  his  lips,  the  palms  of 


EROTICISM  IN  LIFE  23 

his  hands,  his  chest  and  back.  Eroticism  often  is  hid- 
den in  an  interest  in  many  subjects  which  are  apparent- 
ly unrelated  to  it,  an  interest  which  is  a  compensation 
to  one  for  his  lack  of  love.  Man's  first  real  combined 
physical  and  spiritual  suffering  commences  at  puberty 
when  he  hears  new  and  strange  voices  in  his  soul  calling 
for  a  reply  to  which  there  is  no  answer.  He  discovers 
that  society  is  so  constituted  that  he  must  spend  his 
youth,  when  the  passions  are  at  their  height,  in  un- 
naturally curbing  or  misdirecting  them.  He  often  dis- 
covers later  that  even  marriage  is  not  a  full  satisfaction 
for  his  love  instincts. 

Though  man  has  refused  to  concede  the  importance 
that  the  erotic  has  played  in  his  life,  his  fellow  men 
who  were  poets  spoke  for  him.  They  did  not  conceal  the 
truth,  for  the  words  in  which  their  emotions  were  couched 
betrayed  them.  Often  the  people  persecuted  their  spokes- 
man for  uttering  the  truth,  though  they  delighted  in  se- 
cretly reading  his  books. 

The  "purist"  to-day  is  often  the  one  who  revels  (in 
private)  most  in  obscene  literature;  while  many  people 
find  in  such  literature  the  only  means  they  have  of  in- 
dulging their  ungratified  love  life.  Many  book-sellers 
make  a  specialty  of  furnishing  pornographic  books  and 
pictures  to  many  roues  and  celibates. 

The  mere  interest,  however,  in  a  virile  and  unhypo- 
critical  literary  work  like  a  novel  by  Fielding  or  Smollett, 
does  not  indicate  abnormal  eroticism  in  the  reader.  In 
fact,  it  is  often  a  sign  of  some  unhealthy  tendency  or 
starvation  in  human  nature  when  a  person  shrinks  from 
honest  and  frank  literature.  The  school-boy  or  college 
student  who  reads  in  stealth  De  Foe's  novel  Roxana, 
instead  of  Robinson  Crusoe,  who  turns  from  his  Greek 
version  of  Aristophanes  to  the  translation  of  Lysistrata, 


24     THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

or  who  wearies  of  Chaucer's  Prologue  to  the  Canter- 
bury Tales  and  tries  to  read  in  spite  of  the  old  English 
"The  Miller's  Tale"  or  "The  Reeve's  Tale,"  is  not  an 
immoral  youngster.  The  reader  who  not  having  read 
these  works  may  look  them  up  (now  that  they  have  been 
mentioned)  is  not  therefore  an  indecent  or  abnormal 
person.  The  school-boy's  as  well  as  the  reader's  inter- 
est is  each  additional  proof  of  the  erotic  in  us. 

The  real  lover  of  literature  who  has  read  most  of  the 
Latin  poets,  English  dramatists  and  French  novels  is  soon 
in  the  position  where  the  "erotic"  portions  do  not  assume 
for  him  the  vast  importance  they  have  for  the  reader  who 
merely  hunts  them  out  and  takes  no  interest  in  any  other 
passages  but  these. 

Bayle,  whose  Dictionary  abounds  in  many  risque 
stories,  defended  himself  in  an  excellent  essay  called 
"Explanation  Concerning  Obscenities."  He  said  there 
very  aptly: 

"If  any  one  was  so  great  a  lover  of  purity,  as  to  wish 
not  only  that  no  immodest  desire  should  arise  in  his 
mind,  but  also  that  his  imagination  should  be  constantly 
free  from  every  obscene  idea,  he  could  not  attain  his 
end  without  losing  his  eyes  and  his  ears,  and  the  re- 
membrance of  many  things  which  he  could  not  choose 
but  see  and  hear.  Such  a  perfection  could  not  be  hoped 
for,  whilst  we  see  men  and  beasts,  and  know  the  signi- 
ficance of  certain  words  that  make  a  necessary  part  of 
our  language.  It  is  not  in  our  power  to  have,  or  not  to 
have,  certain  ideas,  when  certain  objects  strike  our 
senses;  they  are  imprinted  in  our  imagination  whether 
we  will  or  not.  Chastity  is  not  endangered  by  them, 
provided  we  don't  grow  fond  of  them." 


EROTICISM  IN  LIFE  25 


n 

Men  may  be  engaged  in  philanthropic  or  political 
movements;  they  may  love  their  work  intensely;  they 
may  be  consummating  an  ambition;  they  may  make  sac- 
rifices in  performing  their  duties;  but  withal  their  minds 
are  pondering  on  some  particular  woman,  or  on  women 
in  general.  We  hold  imaginary  conversations  with  women 
we  have  known,  whom  we  know,  or  whom  we  would 
like  to  know.  We  think  about  the  feminine  faces  we 
meet  in  the  streets,  and  experience  a  passing  melancholy 
because  we  are  unacquainted  with  some  of  the  girls 
we  see.  Undue  interest  in  the  opposite  sex  is  of  course 
also  characteristic  of  women.  They  adorn  their  persons 
and  choose  their  styles  in  dress  with  the  object  of  physi- 
cally attracting  the  male. 

Those  who  are  unhappy  in  love  or  marriage  do  not 
find  themselves  compensated  for  their  misfortune  by  the 
fact  that  they  may  possess  great  wealth,  or  have  a  name 
that  is  respected  or  crowned  with  glory.  The  careers  of 
Lord  Nelson  and  Pamell  show  that  national  saviours  and 
leaders  may  be  engulfed  in  a  grand  passion  whose  for- 
tunate outcome  may  be  to  them  possibly  as  momentous 
as  the  welfare  of  their  country.  The  fact  that  Anthony 
was  a  general  on  whose  move  the  saving  of  his  country 
'depended,  did  not  make  him  the  less  interested  in 
Cleopatra.  The  fact  that  Abelard  was  a  philosopher  did 
not  make  him  hold  his  studies  higher  than  he  did 
Heloise.  There  was  really  nothing  abnormal  about  these 
men.  Modem  writers  have  been  attracted  to  them. 
Shakespeare  chose  Anthony  as  the  hero  of  his  play,  and 
Pope's  famous  Epistle  shows  his  interest  in  Abelard.  The 


26      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

amorous  adventures  of  great  military  leaders  like  Caesar 
and  Napoleon  are  well  known. 

The  love  affairs  of  many  literary  men  make  us  almost 
conclude  that  they  were  more  concerned  about  their 
loves  than  their  art.  Recall  Stendhal's  famous  cry 
about  his  perishing  for  want  of  love  or  Balzac's  eternal 
ambition  to  be  famous  and  to  be  loved.  Goethe  once 
exclaimed  that  the  only  person  who  was  happy  was  he 
who  was  fortunate  in  his  domestic  affairs.  He  made 
every  one  of  his  love  affairs  the  basis  of  some  poem,  novel 
or  play;  and  not  to  know  anything  about  his  love  for 
Charlotte  Buff,  or  Frederica  or  Lili,  or  Frau  von  Stein, 
is  to  limit  oneself  in  being  able  to  appreciate  Goethe,  in 
being  able  to  understand  Werther,  Faust,  Wilhelm  Meis- 
ter  and  other  works  by  him. 

And  we  love  these  poets  and  writers  who  naively  con- 
fessed that  they  did  not  care  for  aught  in  life  but  love, 
and  who  sang  of  their  troubles  frankly.  Who  does  not 
find  Catullus  and  Tibullus  sweet?  Who  that  has  read 
them  does  not  cherish  the  lyrical  cries  of  the  Troubadours 
or  the  poems  of  the  Chinese  poets  of  the  T'ang  period? 
Can  any  one  help  thinking  of  Burns  or  De  Musset  with- 
out affection  and  sympathy?  And  there  are  many  who 
would  not  surrender  the  great  body  of  sonnets  and 
lyrics  of  England's  poets  for  her  colonies.  And  why  is 
this?  Because  these  poets  are  ourselves  speaking  for 
us  and  saying  what  we  feel  but  are  unable  to  express. 
The  cry  of  the  mediaeval  Persian  or  Japanese  poet  is  our 
own  cry.  His  joy  is  ours  and  he  is  we  and  we  are  he. 
Once  a  poem  has  left  its  author's  pen  it  is  no  longer 
a  mere  personal  record,  but  becomes  an  enduring  monu- 
ment of  art  in  which  millions  of  men  discern  a  grief  or 
gladness  that  they  too  have  known.  In  a  measure, 
literature  is  more  real  and  eternal  than  life  itself.     It 


EROTICISM  IN  LIFE  27 

makes  the  past  live  and  it  holds  a  soul  that  can  sway 
millions  of  people  for  ever  and  ever.  As  Cicero  said  in 
his  speech  for  Archias  the  poet:  "If  the  Iliad  had  not 
existed,  the  same  tomb  which  covered  Achilles'  body 
would  also  have  buried  his  renown." 


ni 

A  comprehension  of  the  erotic  in  ourselves  will  help 
us  discern  many  false  ideals  connected  with  the  treat- 
ment of  love  in  literature.  I  refer  especially  to  the  ideal 
of  a  first  and  only  love  (regarded  by  the  lover  usually 
as  Platonic)  which  has  been  spread  by  deceptive  authors 
and  which  has  produced  much  affectation  and  insincerity 
in  literature. 

In  real  life  people  do  not  generally  marry  their  first 
loves;  they  often  cherish  contempt  for  persons  once 
loved ;  they  do  not  as  a  rule  go  through  life  always  claim- 
ing that  they  loved  once  and  that  they  would  never  love 
again.  On  the  contrary,  they  usually  marry  and  settle 
down  and  forget  about  their  early  affairs,  although  in 
most  cases  these  have  lasting  influence. 

If  poets,  however,  were  to  speak  in  a  prosaic  manner 
of  their  early  loves,  their  works  would  be  less  admired. 
The  public  loves  loyalty  and  hence  it  encourages  love 
literature  that  is  over-sentimental  and  false.  No  doubt 
when  a  man  contracts  an  unhappy  marriage  or  does 
not  succeed  in  winning  love  later  in  life  he  looks  back 
upon  an  early  love  affair  with  tenderness.  And  while 
it  is  true  that  the  past  always  rules  us  we  are  often  sat- 
isfied as  to  the  manner  in  v/hich  it  shaped  our  futures. 
Robert  Browning  had  an  early  sad  love  affair  which 
influenced  his  Pauline  and  indeed  many  of  his  later 
lyrics,  but  he  was  happy  in  the  love  of  the  poetess  Eliza- 


28      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

beth  Barrett.  Mark  Twain's  married  life  was  ideal  and 
happy,  in  spite  of  an  early  love  affair  of  his  which  ended 
because  of  the  accidental  non-delivery  of  a  letter.  On 
the  other  hand  Byron,  who  was  unhappily  married, 
cherished  the  love  of  his  early  sweetheart  Mary  Cha- 
worth  for  over  twenty  years.  Strangely  and  unjustly 
enough  he  has  been  accused  of  insincerity  and  posing, 
and  most  critics  refuse  to  admit  that  many  of  his  later 
love  poems  were  written  to  her. 

There  are  two  conspicuous  instances  in  literature 
where  a  poet's  love  was  thought  by  himself  to  have 
lasted  for  life,  the  cases  of  Dante  and  Petrarch.  If  the 
loves  of  these  Italians  for  their  mistresses  are  strictly 
investigated,  I  think  it  will  be  discovered  that  they  have 
hoodwinked  the  world  about  their  loves.  They  wrote 
their  best  poems  about  their  beloved  ones,  after  these 
had  died,  and  death  often  makes  a  man  unwittingly 
write  falsely  about  the  past.  Pfister  tells  us  in  his 
Psychoanalytic  Method  of  a  diseased  man  of  fifty  who 
lived  apart  from  his  wife  in  the  same  house,  and  who 
treated  her  brutally.  After  her  death  he  always  insisted 
that  they  were  an  ideal  couple.  Pfister  relates  another 
story  of  a  widower  who  recalled  only  the  happy  part  of 
his  unhappy  married  life,  and  thought  he  never  could 
marry  again. 

There  has  always  been  a  suspicion  among  some  people 
about  the  durability  of  the  love  felt  by  Dante  and 
Petrarch,  for  Beatrice  and  Laura  respectively.  Symonds 
says  of  Laura:  "Though  we  believe  in  the  reality  of 
Laura,  we  derive  no  clear  conception  either  of  her  person 
or  her  character.  She  is  not  so  much  a  woman  as  woman 
in  the  abstract.  .  .  .The  Canzoniere  is  therefore  one 
long  melodious  monotony  poured  from  the  poet's  soul, 


EROTICISM  IN  LIFE  29 

with  the  indefinite  form  of  a  beautiful  woman  seated  in 
a  lovely  landscape."  (Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  Vol, 
XXI,  P.  314-) 

Petrarch  was  twenty- three  years  old  in  1327  when  he 
met  Laura.  She  died  twenty-one  years  later.  Petarch 
survived  her  twenty-six  years,  dying  in  1374-  Petrarch, 
it  should  be  mentioned,  had  two  illegitimate  children  bom 
by  a  mistress  before  Laura's  death ;  they  were  later  legiti- 
mised. The  poet  probably  at  times  felt  the  pangs  of 
disprised  love  to  the  extent  that  he  claims  he  did  in  his 
sonnets;  he  may  have  experienced  the  grief  he  describes 
he  suffered  in  his  sonnets.  But  that  he  was  in  the  con- 
stant throes  of  love  for  her  for  forty-seven  years  is  doubt- 
ful. He  probably  was  projecting  that  ideal  of  faithful 
love  to  please  the  public;  he  offered  himself  as  the  type 
of  hero  the  public  likes;  a  faithful,  steadfast  lover.  It 
was  this  kind  of  ideal  that  made  so  great  a  genius  like 
Thomas  Hardy  gratify  the  public  taste  by  portraying 
so  unswerving  a  lover  as  Gabriel  Oak  in  Far  From  the 
Madding  Crowd. 

The  case  of  Dante  is  an  even  more  noteworthy  ex- 
ample of  literary  affectation  and  self-delusion.  His  love 
is  the  most  astonishing  in  history.  He  and  Beatrice 
were  each  only  nine  years  old  when  he  saw  her.  He 
probably  saw  her  once  after  that.  She  died  in  1290, 
when  the  poet  was  twenty-five  years  old.  Great  as 
Dante's  sorrow  was,  it  did  not  prevent  him  from  marry- 
ing two  years  later.  Dante  makes  Beatrice  the  heroine 
of  his  Divine  Comedy,  or  at  least  of  the  Paradiso.  His 
platonic  affection  for  her  is  so  unnatural  that  one  feels 
he  was  doing  what  Petrarch  did,  unconsciously  creat- 
ing an  ideal  and  depicting  as  permanent  an  emotion,  that 
bad  really  brief  sway. 


30      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

Although  it  is  true  that  their  past  love  affairs  may- 
have  ruled  them  for  life,  neither  Dante  nor  Petrarch 
were  the  faithful  lovers  they  would  have  us  believe  they 
were. 


CHAPTER  III 

DREAMS    AND    LITERATURE 


Freud  discovered  that  dreams  were  the  royal  road 
to  the  unconscious,  in  that  they  portrayed  our  most  dar- 
ing and  immoral  wishes  as  actually  fulfilled.  It  is  not 
necessary  that  we  actually  have  those  wishes  in  our 
waking  life;  it  is  sufficient  if  they  merely  intruded  them- 
selves upon  us  against  our  wills  sometime  in  the  past. 
The  dream  will  express  our  inmost  thoughts.  It  will 
use  symbolical  language  to  let  us  still  remain  in  the  dark 
about  our  painful  desires;  but  the  psychoanalyst  can 
learn  what  these  are.  As  a  result,  when  we  have  re- 
vealed to  us  what  unconscious  emotions  are  at  the  bot- 
tom of  our  nervous  disturbances,  we  may  be  eased  of 
them. 

Many  writers  on  dreams,  in  the  past,  understood  that 
they  referred  to  events  of  our  daily  life,  but  the  exact 
relation  was  not  seen.  The  ancients  were  especially 
interested  in  the  phenomena  of  dreams.  Many  ancient 
histories  and  fairy  tales  abound  in  narrations  and  in- 
terpretations of  dreams. 

Modern  literary  men  also  have  paid  a  great  deal  of 
attention  to  them.  There  are  essays  on  dreams  by 
Locke,  Hobbes,  Thomas  Browne,  Addison,  Leigh  Hunt, 
Dickens,  Emerson  and  Lafcadio  Hearn. 

31 


32      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

One  English  writer  who  gave  almost  complete  ex- 
pression to  the  views  of  Freud  was  William  Hazlitt.  In 
his  essay  "On  Dreams"  in  The  Plain  Speaker,  he  stated 
the  theory.  It  may  come  as  a  surprise  to  Freud — prob- 
ably as  a  greater  surprise  than  when  he  learned  that 
Schopenhauer  had  written  about  repression — to  read  tbe 
following  passage: 

"There  is  a  sort  of  profundity  in  sleep;  it  may  be 
usefully  consulted  as  an  oracle  in  this  way.  It  may  be 
said  that  the  voluntary  power  is  suspended,  and  things 
come  upon  us  as  unexpected  revelations,  which  we  keep 
out  of  our  thoughts  at  other  times.  We  may  be  aware 
of  a  danger  that  we  do  not  choose,  while  we  have  the 
full  command  of  our  faculties,  to  acknowledge  to  our- 
selves; the  impending  event  will  then  appear  to  us  as 
a  dream  and  we  shall  most  likely  find  it  verified  after- 
wards. Another  thing  of  no  small  consequence  is,  that 
we  may  sometimes  discover  our  tacit  and  almost  un- 
conscious sentiments,  with  respect  to  persons  or  things 
in  the  same  way.  We  are  not  hypocrites  in  our  sleep. 
The  curb  is  taken  off  from  our  passions  and  our  imagi- 
nation wanders  at  will.  When  awake,  we  check  these 
rising  thoughts,  and  fancy  we  have  them  not.  In  dreams 
when  we  are  off  our  guard,  they  return  securely  and 
unbidden.  We  make  this  use  of  the  infirmity  of  our 
sleeping  metamorphoses,  that  we  may  repress  any  feel- 
ings of  this  sort  that  we  disapprove  in  their  incipient 
state,  and  detect,  ere  it  be  too  late,  an  unwarrantable 
antipathy  or  fatal  passions.  Infants  cannot  disguise 
their  thoughts  from  others;  and  in  sleep  we  reveal  the 
secret  to  ourselves."     [The  italics  are  mine.] 

Freud's  work  may  almost  be  called  a  commentary  on 
this  extraordinary  passage  of  one  of  England's  greatest 
critics. 


DREAMS  AND  LITERATURE  33 

Let  us  examine  a  few  dreams,  actual  and  artificial, 
in  literature,  and  we  will  note  that  they  show  method 
in  their  madness,  that  they  are  ways  of  expressing  the 
person's  unconscious  desires. 

In  his  astonishing  essay,  "A  Chapter  on  Dreams," 
Stevenson  has  shown  us  how  dreams  influence  author- 
ship. He  tells  us  how  the  "Brownies,"  as  he  calls  the 
powers  that  make  the  dreams,  constructed  his  tales; 
however  he  often  had  to  reject  some  of  these  stories 
because  of  their  lack  of  morals.  As  we  remarked  above, 
wicked  dreams  are  dreamt  even  by  virtuous  people, 
since  the  material  is  drawn  from  the  psychic  life  of 
our  infancy  and  primitive  ancestors.  Stevenson  relates 
how  his  famous  tale  Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde  was  sug- 
gested by  a  dream. 

Stevenson,  in  his  essay,  relates  a  dream  wherein  un- 
wittingly he  lays  bare  much  about  some  past  experience 
in  his  life.  He  found  it  too  immoral  he  says  to  make 
a  tale  of  it.  But  he  did  immoral  things  in  his  dream; 
these  were  related  to  certain  wishes  in  his  waking  hours. 
Those  who  are  familiar  with  an  episode  in  Stevenson's 
life,  that  relating  to  his  marriage,  and  with  Freud's  the- 
ories, will  find  no  difficulty  in  interpreting  the  dream  and 
seeing  how  the  dream  and  the  events  in  his  life  which 
gave  rise  to  it,  tally  with  one  another,  when  the  Freudian 
method  is  applied.  In  fact  the  truth  of  Freud's  views 
could  be  established  alone  by  the  interpretation  applied 
to  this  dream. 

Stevenson  dreamed  that  he  was  the  son  of  a  rich  wick- 
ed man  with  a  most  damnable  temper.  He  (the  son) 
lived  abroad  to  avoid  his  parent,  but  returned  to  Eng- 
land to  find  his  father  married  again.  They  met  and 
later  in  a  quarrel  the  son,  being  insulted,  struck  the 
father  dead.    The  step-mother  lived  in  the  same  house 


34      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

with  the  son,  wto  was  afraid  she  detected  his  guilt.  Later 
he  discovered  her  near  the  scene  of  tlie  murder  with 
some  evidence  of  his  guilt.  Yet  they  returned  arm  in 
arm  home  and  she  did  not  accuse  him.  Once  he  searched 
all  her  possessions  for  that  evidence  she  had  found  of 
his  guilt.  She  returned  and  he  met  her  and  asked  her 
why  she  tortured  him;  "she  knew  he  was  no  enemy  to 
her."  She  fell  upon  her  knees  and  cried  that  she  loved 
him.  Stevenson  comments  that  it  was  not  his  tale  but 
that  of  the  little  peoples,  the  brownies.  Stevenson  was 
mistaken;  it  was  his  tale.  Everything  that  happened  in 
that  dream  had  a  raison  d'etre.  Let  us  see  why  he 
dreamt  this  immoral  dream  and  interpret  it  in  the  light 
of  its  own  facts  and  those  his  biographer  relates. 

In  early  youth  Stevenson  was  a  free-thinker  and  had 
difficulties  with  his  father.  In  1876,  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
six,  he  met  his  future  wife,  Mrs.  Osbourne,  who  was  not 
yet  divorced  from  her  husband.  The  elder  Stevenson 
was  opposed  to  the  match.  Robert  Louis  had  travelled 
extensively;  he  went  to  France  before  he  took  his  mem- 
orable trip  to  California  to  be  near  the  object  of  his 
love.  Mrs.  Osbourne  obtained  a  divorce  and  married 
Stevenson  in  1880.  Thus  after  four  years  of  suffering 
and  the  removal  of  three  great  obstacles,  the  married 
state  of  his  beloved,  the  objection  of  his  father  and  fi- 
nancial troubles,  the  novelist  was  happily  united  to  the 
woman  he  loved.  Mrs.  Osbourne's  first  husband  re- 
married and  Stevenson  s  father  died  in  1887.  Stevenson 
and  his  father  becam.e  reconciled,  and  on  the  latter's 
death,  Stevenson  was  so  shocked  that  he  had  many 
nightmares  of  which  in  all  likelihood  this  dream  was 
one.  The  essay  containing  the  account  of  this  dream 
was  published  in  January,  1888,  in  Scribner's  Magazine, 
and  is  included  in  the  volume  Across  the  Plains  issued 


DREAMS  AND  LITERATURE  35 

in  1892.  When  the  dream  occurred  I  cannot  say;  it 
may  have  been  between  the  date  of  his  father's  death 
on  May  8,  1887,  and  the  end  of  the  year,  by  which  time 
the  essay  had  tjeen  written.  It  may  have  been  dreamed 
even  before  the  marriage  in  1880,  or  thereafter  while 
the  elder  Stevenson  was  alive.  The  interpretation  is  not 
affected.  The  state  of  mind,  however,  which  gave  birth 
to  the  dream  is  that  in  which  he  was  before  his  wife  was 
divorced  and  while  his  father  was  opposed  to  him. 

Two  men  were  in  the  way  of  Stevenson's  marriage — 
his  father  and  his  loved  one's  husband,  Mr.  Osbourne. 
Stevenson  wanted  these  men  out  of  the  way;  they  were 
the  obstacles  to  his  happiness.  He  wished  that  Mr. 
Osbourne  were  divorced  and  he  entertained  bitterness 
towards  his  father  for  showing  such  animosity  to  the 
match.  Now  we  are  not  accusing  Stevenson  of  a  crime 
when  we  say  that  unconsciously  the  thought  may  have 
come  to  him  if  one  or  both  of  these  men  were  dead 
his  road  to  marriage  would  be  easy.  The  dream  of  the 
murder  of  the  father  by  the  son  is  understood  by  all 
Freudians.  It  is  not  an  uncommon  one,  especially 
where  there  is  ill  feeling  between  son  and  father,  or 
where  an  over-attachment  exists  for  the  mother.  It 
has  its  origin  psychically  in  infancy  when  the  father 
was  looked  upon  as  a  rival  of  the  infant  in  the  affec- 
tions of  the  mother,  and  the  dream  is  given  additional 
grounds  for  its  entry  when  the  relations  between  father 
and  son  continue  or  grow  strained.  It  represents  just 
what  it  portrays,  the  wish  of  the  child  for  the  father 
to  be  out  of  the  way,  or  dead.  When  the  child  wishes 
some  one  dead  he  means  he  wants  him  absent;  he  has 
no  conception  of  death.  The  dream  of  murdering  one's 
own  father  then  is  evidence  of  hostile  feeling  entertained 
by  the  dreamer  to  his  father  either  in  infancy,  where  it 


36      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

is  always  entertained,  or  later  in  life.  It  represents  a 
wish  of  the  unconscious  fulfilled,  the  removal  of  an  ob- 
stacle to  happiness.  Needless  to  say  it  does  not  rep- 
resent a  conscious  desire  on  the  part  of  the  dreamer  in 
his  waking  hours  to  kill  his  father. 

We  know  how  strained  Stevenson's  relations  with  his 
father  were.  The  elder  Stevenson  was  not  sympathetic 
to  his  son's  liberal  ideas  and  later  he  opposed  him  in  his 
lovemaking.  Two  more  serious  oppositions  to  a  young 
man,  one  to  the  inclinations  of  his  intellect  and  the 
other  to  his  love,  can  not  be  imagined.  The  novelist 
never  realised  what  the  feature  of  the  murder  of  his 
father  in  his  dream  meant,  and  how  it  arose.  If  in 
his  dream  his  father  appeared  as  rich  and  wicked  with 
a  damnable  temper,  that  is  what  Stevenson  really 
thought  his  father  was.  In  the  dream  the  son  lived 
abroad  to  avoid  the  father,  and  this  Stevenson  also 
actually  did  in  life,  and  as  a  result,  by  the  way,  we  have 
some  of  his  early  books  of  travel,  and  I  dare  say  if  these 
were  closely  examined  evidence  of  his  strained  relations 
with  his  father  would  appear. 

As  we  know,  in  dreams  there  is  considerable  distor- 
tion, and  the  person  of  our  dream  in  an  instant  becomes 
another  individual.  This  occurs  in  Stevenson's  dream. 
No  doubt  the  dreamer's  father  was  actually  made  up  of 
a  combination  of  the  elder  Stevenson  and  Mr.  Osbourne, 
both  of  whom  Stevenson  wished  were  out  of  the  way. 
But  a  more  important  distortion  takes  place,  the  merging 
of  the  second  wife  of  the  dreamer's  murdered  father 
with  the  married  woman  in  real  life  whom  Stevenson 
loved.  We  recall  that  in  the  dream  the  dreamer  lives 
with  his  father's  second  wife  in  the  house  after  the 
murder,  but  there  is  a  barrier  between  them,  for  the 
dreamer  is  haunted  by  the  woman's  possible  knowledge 


DREAMS  AND  LITERATURE  37 

of  his  guilt.  He  loves  her  really  and  they  return  arm  in 
arm  from  the  scene  of  the  murder.  He  did  not  want 
her  to  know  that  he  had  committed  the  murder  because 
he  wanted  to  marry  her.  He  searched  her  possessions 
for  the  evidence  of  the  guilt  she  found  and  then  bursts 
out  asking  why  she  tortures  him,  he  is  not  an  enemy 
of  hers;  that  he  really  loves  her,  is  implied.  She  also, 
it  appears,  had  loved  him  and  makes  confession  of  the 
fact.  No  doubt  this  scene  must  be  largely  a  picture  of 
the  proposal  of  Stevenson  to  his  future  wife.  The  situa- 
tion depicted  showing  the  feeling  of  guilt  the  dreamer 
has  for  his  murder  may  be  traced  to  his  own  guilty 
thoughts  in  actual  life  on  account  of  his  unconscious 
wishes  for  both  husband  and  father  to  be  out  of  the 
way.  These  feelings  appear  in  the  remorse  of  the  mur- 
derer and  in  his  suspicion  of  discovery  by  the  woman 
he  loves.  We  might  trace  the  dream  to  much  earlier 
material  in  Stevenson's  life  if  we  knew  all  the  facts. 
We  do  know  that  he  had  an  earlier  love  affair  in  youth 
in  which  he  was  disappointed  and  that  he  has  left  us 
f)oems  celebrating  that  episode. 

The  dream  concludes  with  the  implication  that  the 
dreamer  and  the  step-mother  marry  as  they  had  con- 
fessed their  love  to  one  another;  there  are  no  longer  any 
remorses  or  fears  on  one  side  or  suspicions  on  the  other, 
and  the  obstacles  to  the  marriage,  the  objections  of  the 
dreamer's  father,  the  legal  ties  of  the  husband  to  the 
beloved  woman,  have  been  removed.  Stevenson  wanted 
all  this  to  happen  in  real  life  and  I'-ter  it  incidentally  did 
turn  out  that  way.  Both  his  father  and  the  husband  of 
Mrs.  Osbourne  were  rem.oved  as  barriers,  the  former  by 
acquiescence  and  forgiving,  the  latter  by  divorce.  The 
dreamer  represents  as  fulfilled  his  wish  to  marry  Mrs. 
Osbourne,  with  all  opposition  removed.    The  dreamer's 


38      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

father  is  both  the  elder  Stevenson  and  Mr.  Osbourne, 
the  father  and  the  husband  respectively,  made  one  in  the 
dream;  the  second  wife  of  the  father,  step-mother  of  the 
dreamer,  becomes  Mrs.  Osbourne,  Stevenson's  love  who 
became  a  wife  a  second  time.  Thus  we  have  had  what 
Freud  calls  condensation  and  displacement  in  the  dream. 
The  dream  sheds  much  light  on  the  most  important 
period  of  his  life;  it  fits  in  with  the  facts  left  us  by 
the  biographer.  We  see  what  his  repressed  wishes  were 
in  those  days  and  how  they  appeared  realised  in  his 
dream. 

n 

Freud  first  applied  his  theory  of  dream  interpretation 
to  fiction  in   1907  in  his  study    of    Jensen's    Gradiva 

(1903)- 

Freud  might  have  analysed  Gautier's  story  Arria 
Marcella  instead  of  Jensen's  Gradiva,  which  was  obvi- 
ously suggested  by  the  plot  of  Gautier's  tale.  Arria 
Marcella  appeared  in  1852,  over  fifty  years  before  Jen- 
sen's story.  It  gives  one  a  good  opportunity  for  study- 
ing Gautier  himself  and  is  an  effective  corroboration  of 
Freud's  theories  en  dreams. 

Octavius  sees  in  a  museum  a  piece  of  lava  that  had 
cooled  over  a  woman's  breast  and  preserved  its  form. 
He  falls  in  love  with  the  original  woman,  though  he 
knows  she  is  dead.  He  is  a  fetich  worshipper  and  is 
enamoured  of  ancient  types  of  women  preserved  in 
art;  he  has  even  been  cast  into  ecstasy  by  the  sight  of 
hair  from  a  Roman  woman's  tomb.  He  dreams  of  the 
"glory  that  was  Greece  and  the  grandeur  that  was 
Rome."  He  is  a  pagan  and  loves  form  and  beauty.  In 
his  dream  that  night  he  is  transported  to  the  year  of  the 
eruption  of  Vesuvius  and  witnesses  a  performance  of  a 


DREAMS  AND  LITERATURE  39 

play  by  Plautus  in  a  Roman  theatre.  Here  he  sees  the 
real  woman  whose  shapely  breast  had  preserved  its  form 
in  the  lava  that  killed  her.  She  also  sees  him  and 
loves  him.  Her  slave  leads  him  to  her  home.  She  is  a 
Roman  courtesan  and  her  name  is  Arria  Marcella.  She 
tells  him  that  she  has  come  to  life  because  of  his  desire 
at  the  museum  to  meet  her  in  life.  His  wish  in  waking 
life  is  fulfilled  in  his  dream.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  as  the 
poet  comments,  art  preserves  as  alive  all  the  beauty  of 
antiquity. 

Octavius  realises  his  wish  and,  soon,  kisses  and  sighs 
are  heard.  But  the  ciiarm  is  soon  dispelled,  for  a  Chris- 
tian man  comes  in  who  reproaches  her,  even  though  she 
did  not  belong  to  his  religion.  She  refuses  to  abandon 
Octavius,  but  the  Christian,  by  an  exorcism,  makes  Arria 
release  Octavius,  who  awakens  and  swoons.  He  loved 
her  for  the  rest  of  his  life  and  when  he  married  later,  in 
memory  he  was  unfaithful  to  his  wife,  for  he  always 
thought  of  Arria. 

The  meaning  of  all  this  is  obvious.  It  is  an  expression 
of  Gautier's  favourite  theory  that  Christianity  is  hostile 
to  love  and  beauty,  and  has  deprived  the  world  of  much 
of  the  greatness  of  paganism.  But  there  is  more  here 
than  Gautier  himself  imagined.  First,  the  story  like  all 
dreams  is  a  wish-fulfilment  of  the  unconscious.  Not 
only  the  girl  but  the  world  of  her  time  becomes  a  real- 
ity and  Octavius  lives  in  his  dream  in  the  pagan  world. 
There  are  the  moments  of  anxiety  where  the  Christian 
interferes  and  hinders  the  satisfaction  of  Octavius's  love. 
Freud's  theory  is  that  an  anxiety  dream  is  formed  when  a 
repressed  emotion  encounters  a  strong  resistance. 

Now  Octavius  is  Gautier,  who  makes  a  work  of  art  cut 
of  the  dream,  preserves  it  for  humanity  and  gives  us  a 


40      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

valuable  thing  of  beauty.  Gautier  makes  up  for  the 
ugliness  of  to-day  by  preserving  the  beauty  of  the  past. 
Gautier  satisfies  his  longing  for  the  old  pagan  world 
now  vanished  by  making  his  hero  live  in  it  and  realise 
the  love  of  one  of  its  courtesans. 

This  story  reveals  the  author  as  much  as  his  Madam- 
oisclle  de  Maupin  does.  We  have  the  same  Gautier  for 
whom  only  the  material  world  existed,  the  Gautier  who 
was  obsessed  by  sex,  hated  Christianity  and  worshipped 
art  alone.  The  trained  psychoanalyst  who  wishes  to  go 
deep  into  the  unconscious  of  Gautier  will,  I  think,  find 
some  perverse  qualities  like  fetichism,  revealed  not  only 
in  this  tale  but  in  others. 

Gautier  pursues  the  motive  of  this  story  in  several 
other  tales.  He  lives  constantly  in  his  fantasies  amidst 
the  beauties  of  the  ancient  world.  It  is  hard  to  believe 
that  many  of  his  tales  of  phantom  love  scenes  laid  in 
ancient  times  were  not  actually  dreamed  by  him. 

His  novel,  The  Mummy's  Foot,  his  stories.  The  Golden 
Chain,  One  of  Cleopatra's  Nights,  King  Candaules,  and 
two  that  are  considered  his  best,  The  Dead  Leman  and 
The  Fleece  of  Gold,  show  the  unconscious  worshipper  of 
physical  beauty  in  Gautier.  All  these  stories  may  be 
analysed  like  dreams,  for  they  are  creatures  of  the 
author's  imagination  whereby  he  consoled  himself  for 
the  loss  of  the  pagan  world.  He  was  really  a  pagan 
transported  into  our  time  and  he  lived  those  times  over 
in  his  stories. 

m 

Kipling's  dream  story  The  Brushwood  Boy  is  a  very 
good  confirmation  of  Freud's  theories.  We  will  analyse 
it  psychoanalytically;  it  will  be  seen  that  the  artificial 


DREAMS  AND  LITERATURE  41 

dream  in  it  is  inspired  by  the  same  causes  as  real 
dreams  are.  The  story  was  published  in  the  Century 
Magazine,  December,  1895,  and  appeared  in  book  form 
in  1901,  a  year  after  Freud's  great  work  on  Dreams  had 
been  issued.  Kipling  had  no  knowledge  of  Freud's 
theories,  but  he  shows  his  hero  suffering  an  unconscious 
repression;  Georgie  saw  for  many  years  visions  of  a  girl 
he  had  met  in  childhood  and  apparently  forgotten.  He 
dreamed  of  her  often  and  these  dreams  give  us  an  insight 
into  the  hero's  anxieties  and  longings. 

Georgie,  the  Brushwood  Boy,  dreamed  at  the  age  of 
three  of  a  policeman.  At  the  age  of  six  he  had  both 
day  and  night  dreams  which  always  began  with  a  pile 
of  brushwood  near  the  beach.  There  was  a  girl  he 
saw  at  the  pile  of  brushwood  who  merged  with  a  prin- 
cess he  saw  in  an  illustration  of  Grimm's  Fairy  Tales. 
He  called  her  Annie-an-louise.  At  the  age  of  seven  he 
saw  at  Oxford,  on  a  visit,  a  girl  who  looked  like  the 
child  in  the  illustrations  of  Alice  in  Wonderland,  and  he 
flirted  with  her.  He  went  to  India  as  a  young  m.an.  In 
his  dreams  he  saw  the  old  policeman  of  his  infant  dreams, 
who  was  saying,  'T  am  Policeman  Day  coming  back  from 
the  city  of  Sleep."  One  day  in  a  dream  he  stepped 
into  a  steamer,  and  saw  a  stone  lily  floating  on  the 
water.  He  met  the  same  girl  of  his  early  dreams  at  the 
Lily  Lock  and  they  took  a  pony  on  the  Thirty  Mile 
Road.  He  often  dreamed  of  her  and  in  his  dreams  was 
happy  when  with  her  and  unhappy  when  away  from 
her.  When  he  got  back  to  England  he  heard  a  girl  guest 
at  his  house  sing  a  song  of  Policeman  Day  and  the  City 
of  Sleep,  and  he  guessed  that  it  was  she  who  wrote 
the  music  and  composed  the  song.  Her  name  was  Miss 
Lacy;  she  was  the  girl  he  met  as  a  child  at  Oxford.  He 
took  a  ride  with  her  and  each  found  that  the  other  had 


42      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

dreamed  the  same  dreams.  She  knew  all  about  the 
Thirty  Mile  Road  and  she  had  once  kissed  him  in  his 
sleep.  At  that  very  moment  he  had  dreamed  that  she 
had  bestowed  the  kiss.  Each  had  cherished  the  other 
as  an  ideal,  now  to  be  realised,  in  marriage. 

What  is  the  meaning  of  this  story?  How  did  Georgie 
come  to  love  a  girl  he  had  known  apparently  only  in 
his  dreams?  Where  does  the  Policeman  come  in  and 
what  is  the  secret  of  the  dream  journeys  on  the  Thirty 
Mile  Road?  Georgie's  dreams  were  the  fulfilment  of 
his  unconscious  desires  in  waking  life.  He  had  actually 
seen  his  love  in  his  childhood,  was  attracted  towards  her 
but  apparently  forgot  about  her.  But  the  love  was  there 
nevertheless;  it  was  repressed.  He  neither  knew  why  he 
dreamed  of  her  nor  did  he  believe  she  actually  existed.  He 
conjured  her  up  in  the  books  he  read  and  identified  her 
with  the  princess  of  the  fairy  tales.  Like  the  neurotic  pa- 
tient he  did  not  know  the  cause  of  his  anxieties;  he  could 
not  fit  altogether  in  the  scheme  of  life;  he  was  dreaming 
inexplicable  dreams  which  were  having  an  effect  upon 
him  in  his  waking  hours.  In  a  case  like  this  we  know 
that  the  dreams  have  a  reality  that  makes  them  almost 
equivalent  to  events  of  the  day.  When  he  took  those 
trips  with  her  in  his  sleep  he  was  fulfilling  the  uncon- 
scious wishes  of  his  waking  life.  He  suffered  nightmares 
when  anything  interfered  to  take  him  away  from  her. 
The  anxiety  dream  as  Freud  has  explained  shows  that 
there  has  been  an  interference  with  the  satisfying  of  the 
love  desire. 

Policeman  Day  is  the  cause  of  terror  because  he  rep- 
resents the  time  when  the  dreams  do  not  occur,  day 
time,  when  he  becomes  the  symbol  of  love  unrealised,  for 
in  the  day  Georgie  is  no  longer  with  his  love.  Police- 
man Day  is  consciousness  opposed  to  unconsciousness, 


DREAMS  AND  LITERATURE  43 

reality  opposed  to  illusion.     Miss  Lacy  also  felt  this 
when  she  sang  the  song  with  the  refrain, 

Oh  pity  us  !     Ah,  pity  us ! 

We   wakeful !     Oh,   pity   us ! 

We  that  go  back  with  PoHceman  Day 

Back  from  the  City  of  Sleep. 

She  also  was  with  Georgie  in  her  dreams  and  dreaded 
waking.  He  also  was  present  in  her  unconscious  and 
she  never  really  forgot  the  boy  she  had  met  as  a  child, 
although  she  had  no  conscious  memory  of  him.  Their 
injfantile  impressions  were  powerful  and  ruled  them 
all  the  time  till  they  met  again.  They  dreamed  they 
were  with  each  other  because  they  wanted  to  be  with 
each  other.  He  guessed  she  wrote  the  poem  because  she 
had  felt  as  he  did.  The  poem  was  an  anxiety  poem, 
voicing  the  unconscious  desire  to  be  with  the  loved 
one.  It  represents  the  state  of  mind  of  both  lovers;  he 
had  also  felt  the  sentiments  of  the  poem,  but  she  put 
them  in  words.  When  he  came  back  to  England  he 
was  unconsciously  going  to  find  the  ideal  of  his  dreams, 
the  original  Annie-an-louise.  When  he  found  her  he  was 
cured  of  his  dreams  and  anxieties.  Their  meeting  acted 
like  a  cure  for  their  mysterious  longings.  All  their  dreams 
were  made  up  of  infantile  fantasies  and  represented  re- 
pressions.   The  marriage  satisfies  these  repressions. 

I  dare  say  Kipling  was  his  own  model  for  the  Brush- 
wood Boy. 

This  disposes  of  any  interpretations  based  on  mere 
mental  telepathy  between  George  and  Miss  Lacy.  They 
had  the  same  feelings  because  they  suffered  the  same 
repression  and  had  met  and  loved  each  other  in  infancy. 

Among  other  dream  stories  by  Kipling,  two  of  the 
best  are  They  and  The  Dream  of  Duncan  Parrenness. 


44      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 


IV 

Brandes  said  in  his  book  on  Shakespeare: 

"As,  knowing  the  life  and  experiences  of  the  great 
modern  poet,  we  are  generally  able  to  trace  how  these 
are  worked  upon  and  transformed  in  his  works,  it  is 
reasonable  to  suppose  that  in  olden  times  poets  were 
moved  by  the  same  causes,  acted  in  the  same  way,  at 
least  those  of  them  who  have  been  efficient.  When  we 
know  of  the  adventures  and  emotions  of  the  modern 
poet,  and  are  able  to  trace  them  in  the  productions  of 
his  free  fancy;  when  it  is  possible,  where  they  are  un- 
known to  us,  to  evolve  the  hidden  personality  of  the 
poet  and — as  every  capable  critic  has  experienced — to 
have  our  conjectures  finally  borne  out  by  facts  revealed 
by  the  contemporary  author,  then  we  cannot  feel  it  to 
be  impossible,  that  in  the  case  of  an  older  poet,  we  might 
also  be  successful  in  determining  when  he  speaks  ear- 
nestly from  his  heart,  and  in  tracing  his  feelings  and 
experiences  through  his  work,  especially  when  they  are 
lyrical,  and  their  mode  of  expression  passionate  and 
emotional." 

Just  as  we  can  build  up  a  picture  of  a  modern  author 
from  dreams  he  reports,  we  can  do  the  same  with  ancient 
authors. 

I  have  tried  to  build  up  a  portrait  of  the  author  of 
the  Achilles-Patroclus  episodes  in  the  Iliad,  from  a  dream 
repeated  there — that  of  Achilles  in  the  twenty-third  book. 
It  is  remarkable  that  no  portrait  of  Homer,  or  whoever 
was  the  author  of  the  books  dealing  with  Achilles,  has 
thus  far  been  constructed.  Whether  we  assume  that 
one  man  or  more  wrote  the  Iliad,  we  may  draw  one  in- 
evitable conclusion:  That  the  parts  of  the  poem  in  which 


DREAMS  AND  LITERATURE  45 

Achilles  figures  contain  the  clue  to  the  author  of  those 
sections.  It  is  assumed  generally  that  Homer  wrote 
those  sections.  Homer  sang  his  own  troubles  through 
his  hero  as  a  medium.  Unconsciously  his  own  traits  and 
personaUty  crept  in.  The  great  tragedy  of  Achilles's 
life  was  the  death  of  his  friend  Patroclus;  his  master 
passion  was  friendship.  It  does  not  require  psychoanaly- 
sis to  detect  beneath  the  great  grief  of  the  warrior, 
Homer's  own  despair.  The  poet  sings  of  the  bereave- 
ment of  his  hero  in  too  poignant  a  strain  for  any  one 
to  doubt  that  in  Patroclus  he  was  not  bewailing  some  loss 
of  his  own.  We  need  not  hesitate  in  saying,  to  judge 
by  the  manner  in  which  the  poet  treats  of  friendship, 
and  writes  of  it  with  his  heart's  blood  as  it  were,  that 
some  friendship  was  the  crown  of  Homer's  existence.  He 
no  doubt  also  suffered  a  terrible  crisis  when  he  lost  his 
friend,  as  is  only  too  apparent,  through  parting  or  by 
death.  When  the  blow  befell  him,  he  was  drawn  to  the 
one  incident  of  the  many  in  connection  with  the  Trojan 
war,  the  legend  centring  around  Achilles  and  Patroclus. 
Why  did  he  not  choose  some  other  feature  of  which  there 
were  so  many  and  with  which  other  poets  dealt?  The 
very  choice  of  the  subject  apart  from  the  internal  treat- 
ment furnishes  the  proof  he  could  not  help  but  choose 
that  which  interested  him  most  because  of  some  experi- 
ence in  his  own  life.  He  had  now  an  opportunity  of  reg- 
istering his  sorrows  and  adding  personal  matters  while 
singing  his  tale.  Life  had  become  empty  to  him  and  his 
only  consolation  was  to  put  his  pangs  into  song.  He  even 
wished  to  die. 

The  key  to  these  deductions  is  furnished  by  a  sec- 
tion of  the  twenty-third  book,  of  about  fifty  lines,  of 
which  John  Addington  Symonds  says,  "There  is  surely 
nothing  more  thrilling  in  its  pathos  throughout  the  whole 


46     THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

range  of  poetry."  Achilles  sees  Patroclus  in  his  dreams, 
who  recalls  to  him  their  youthful  days  and  asks  to  be 
buried  with  him  and  foretells  Achilles's  own  death.  The 
warrior  promises  to  grant  his  friend's  requests  and 
pleads:  "But  stand  nearer  to  me,  that  embracing  each 
other  for  a  little  while,  we  may  indulge  in  sad  lamenta- 
tion." Achilles  tried  in  vain  to  touch  him,  and  told  his 
comrades  afterwards:  "All  night  the  spirit  of  poor 
Patroclus  stood  by  me,  groaning  and  lamenting,  and  en- 
joined to  me  each  particular  and  was  wonderfully  like 
unto  himself."  All  this  has  too  authentic  and  personal 
a  touch  for  any  one  not  to  feel  that  Homer  was  re- 
porting a  dream  of  his  own  and  was  attributing  it  to 
Achilles.  The  poet  had  also  spent  restless  nights  and 
saw  his  dead  friend  before  him  "wonderfully  like  unto 
himself";  the  dream  was  very  vivid  to  him,  and  more 
so  if  as  tradition  reports  he  was  blind. 

No  indeed,  Homer  was  no  mere  spectator  reciting 
Achilles's  troubles  in  an  objective  manner.  He  had  a 
great  sorrow  of  his  own  and  he  did  not  go  out  of  the 
way  to  counterfeit  one.  He  sang  his  own  loss;  he  told 
his  own  dream;  Achilles  was  the  medium  through  which 
he  told  the  world  of  his  own  troubles.  Patroclus's  proph- 
ecy that  Achilles  would  die  soon  shows  that  Homer 
after  his  loss  had  wished  he  too  would  die,  and  Homer 
must  have  dreamt  that  his  own  end  would  come  soon,  in 
accordance  with  the  principle  that  we  often  dream  as 
happening  or  about  to  happen  what  we  wish  to  take 
place.  He  saw  his  friend  in  his  dream  just  as  we  all  do 
because  we  wish  our  friends  to  be  still  with  us.  This 
dream  then  is  the  clue  to  the  tragedy  of  Homer's  life. 

So  Homer  had  loved  a  friend  and  suffered.  Like  Pa- 
troclus, he  hoped  his  friend  wanted  to  be  buried  with 
him;   at  least  Homer  wanted  to  have  his  own  bones 


DREAMS  AND  LITERATURE  47 

repose  near  those  of  his  friend.  What  the  nature  of 
the  friendship  was  we  cannot  say;  it  may  have  been 
homosexual,  a  love  which  was  common  among  the  later 
Greeks.  But  it  did  have  the  element  of  passion.  We 
know  now  the  chief  event  of  Homer's  life.  What  the 
details  were  we  cannot  say.  It  is  rather  unsafe  to  guess. 
But  there  are  a  few  facts  that  appear,  whose  import  is 
significant.  Achilles,  we  recall,  resolved  to  fight  the 
Trojans  again  only  because  they  killed  Patroclus.  He 
was  now  ready  to  forget  Agamemnon's  wrong  to  him  in 
depriving  him  of  his  captive  woman.  He  knew  that  by 
his  new  resolve  he  would  lose  his  life.  He  was  willing 
to  die  for  his  friend.  Homer's  love  for  his  friend  was 
also  so  great  that  he  too  would  no  doubt  have  given 
up  his  life  for  him.  This  I  believe  establishes  the  pas- 
sionate element  in  the  friendship  of  both  warrior  and 
poet. 

Again,  Achilles  blames  himself  for  Patroclus's  death. 
Had  he  not  withdrawn  from  the  fight,  the  Trojans  would 
not  have  gained  any  victories  and  not  have  killed  his 
friend.  In  short,  he  had  been  too  sensitive,  proud  and 
sulky ;  he  had  been  too  easy  a  prey  to  anger  and  revenge. 
Now  he  was  suffering  remorse.  This  indicates  that 
Homer  had  quarrels  with  his  friend.  We  know  by 
psychoanalysis  that  people  who  lose  by  death  a  loved 
one  feel  guilt  stricken  if  in  life  they  had  hostile 
wishes  against  the  person ;  in  fact  they  attribute  the  death 
to  these  secret  emotions.  The  remorse  is  a  reaction  to  the 
hostile  wishes,  and  it  is  possible,  but  I  do  not  wish  to 
press  this  point,  that  Homer's  friend  was  either  ostra- 
cised or  shunned  by  many  for  some  idiosyncrasy  or 
event  in  his  past  life  for  which  he  was  not  to  blame 
and  hence  the  poet  loved  him  the  more.  Patroclus  re- 
minds Achilles  in  the  dream  that  as  a  child,  he.  Pa- 


48      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

troclus,  had  killed  a  playmate.  This  detail  would  not 
have  been  invented  by  a  poet  writing  impersonally. 
Homer  thought  of  some  event  in  the  life  of  his  own 
friend. 

But  the  real  deduction  nevertheless  remains  I  believe 
unassailable,  that  the  master  passion  of  Homer's  life  was 
friendship,  that  Achilles  contains  much  of  the  poet  un- 
consciously and  that  many  of  the  moods  and  passions 
given  to  him  were  Homer's  own.  Homer  also  suffered 
a  terrible  loss  and  sang  of  it  by  emphasising  the  despair 
of  Achilles  at  Patroclus's  death  which  made  him  forget 
Agamemnon's  wrong.  The  great  warrior's  calamity  was 
to  him  a  sadder  blow  than  the  loss  of  his  captive  woman, 
with  whom  he  had  fallen  in  love,  proving  that  with 
Homer,  as  with  Achilles,  friendship  was  stronger  than 
the  love  passion.  The  fact  that  so  little  of  love  appears 
in  the  Iliad  has  often  excited  comment.  It  is  true  the 
war  was  fought  on  account  of  a  woman,  but  there  is 
almost  nothing  of  romantic  love  in  the  poem.  This  is 
because  Homer  had  probably  never  felt  love  as  he  had 
known  friendship.  That  love  as  a  tender  emotion  exist- 
ed, we  know  from  the  lyric  poems  written  not  very  long 
after  Homer.  If  a  man  writes  works  in  which  he  says 
so  little  about  love  for  women,  it  may  be  because  he 
has  never  had  such  love.  That  Homer  was  altogethef 
indifferent  about  women,  however,  is  not  likely.  Some 
critic  will  some  day  study  the  women  in  Homer  from  a 
psychoanalytic  viewpoint.  Women  figure  more  in  the 
Odyssey;  it  is  unlikely  that  the  same  man  wrote  both 
poems;  and  Samuel  Butler  has  tried  to  prove  that  the 
Odyssey  was  written  by  a  woman.  This  is  not  so  absurd 
as  it  seems;  at  any  rate  some  woman's  influence  made 
itself  felt  in  the  writing  of  that  poem. 


DREAMS  AND  LITERATURE  49 

It  is  only  right  to  conclude  that  the  same  motives 
and  principles  of  singing  which  actuated  later  poets 
prompted  the  earlier  ones.  If  Milton  appears  in  Lucifer, 
Goethe  in  Faust  and  Mephistopheles,  Shakespeare  in 
Hamlet,  there  can  be  no  question  Homer  has  drawn 
himself  in  Achilles  and  an  intimate  friend  of  his  in 
Patroclus. 

After  having  formed  this  theory,  I  discovered  the 
following  significant  passage  in  Plato's  Republic,  Book 
X,  "For  we  are  told  that  even  Creophylus  neglected 
Homer  singularly  in  his  lifetime." 


There  are  thousands  of  dreams,  actual  and  artificial, 
reported  in  literature  and  history.  Many  of  these  may 
be  analysed,  but  in  most  of  them  sufficient  data  are 
lacking  to  help  us  with  the  analysis.  There  are  entire 
books  cast  in  the  form  of  dreams.  There  are  Flaubert's 
Temptation  of  St.  Anthony,  Hauptman's  Hannele, 
Strindberg's  Dream  Play,  Maeterlinck's  The  Blue  Bird, 
and  its  sequel  The  Betrothal,  Newman's  Dream  of  Ger- 
ontius,  William  Morris's  Dream  of  John  Ball.  There 
are  the  artificial  visions  of  Dante,  Bunyan  and  Lang- 
land.  There  are  dreams  recorded  in  Apuleius,  Rabelais, 
Chaucer,  the  Mort  D 'Arthur,  Swedenborg;  in  the  Bible 
and  the  Talmud;  in  the  histories  of  Herodotus,  Xeno- 
phon,  Suetonius,  Dio  Cassius;  in  Richard  III  and  Cym- 
beline,  in  Paradise  Lost  and  Robinson  Crusoe  and  Haw- 
thorne. 

The  dreams  recorded  in  ancient  and  mediaeval  litera- 
ture are  in  many  cases  actual  ones.  Dreams  were  form- 
erly regarded  as  being  prophetic  of  the  future,  but  they 
only  rarely  have  such  value.     For  this  reason  most  of 


50     THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

the  interpretations  put  on  them  by  ancient  sages  are 
worthless  for  our  purposes.  Cicero  in  his  On  Divination 
has  reported  many  dreams  and  given  us  arguments  pro 
and  con  regarding  their  prophetic  value.  It  is  to  be 
hoped  that  the  scientific  investigation  of  Freud  into  the 
interpretation  of  dreams  will  not  give  superstition  a  new 
weapon. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE    CEDIPUS    COMPLEX    AND    THE    BROTHER    AND    SISTER 
COMPLEX 


Freud  opened  up  a  new  field  of  dream  interpretation 
by  his  discovery  of  the  significance  of  the  remark  of 
the  chorus  in  Sophocles's  (Edipus  about  men  dreaming 
of  incestuous  relations  with  their  own  mothers.  He  saw 
this  dream  referred  to  the  barbarous  times  in  which 
such  incest  actually  occurred,  and  to  the  infantile  af- 
fection of  the  child  for  the  mother.  He  saw  that  the 
counterpart  of  this  dream  was  in  the  mythical  material 
dramatised  by  Sophocles  of  a  man  murdering  his  father 
and  marr>'ing  his  mother.  The  dream  means  that  one 
wants  his  mother's  love.  Herodotus  reports  a  dream 
of  Hippias  who  dreamt  of  incest  with  his  mother.  Plato's 
Republic,  Bk.  IX,  says  that  in  our  dream  our  animal 
nature  practises  incest  with  the  mother.  Dio  Cassius 
reports  Caesar  had  such  a  dream. 

The  influence  of  the  writer's  attitude  towards  his 
father  or  mother  appears  in  his  literary  work.  Stendhal 
has  left  us  a  record  of  the  intense  child  love  he  had  for 
his  mother;  he  hated  his  father.  One  can  see  the  re- 
sults of  these  conditions  in  his  life,  work  and  beliefs. 
He  became  an  atheist,  since  people  who  throw  off  the 
influence  of  their  fathers  often  cast  aside  also  their  be- 

51 


52      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

lief  in  a  universal  father.  This  also  explains  largely 
the  atheism  of  Shelley,  whose  relations  with  his  father 
were  not  cordial.  The  essay  on  the  necessity  of  atheism 
was  the  cause  of  Shelley's  expulsion  from  Oxford  Uni- 
versity. 

An  extreme  attachment  to  the  mother  is  the  nucleus 
of  future  neurosis.  If  the  mother  is  intensely  loved  by 
her  infant  son  or  boy,  and  then  she  dies,  he  will  still  be 
looking  for  a  mother  substitute,  as  it  were.  Freud's  de- 
duction about  the  mysterious  smile  of  the  Mona  da  Lisa 
is  very  plausible;  it  was  in  all  likelihood  the  unconscious 
reproduction  by  the  artist  of  his  mother's  smile  which 
he  rediscovered  in  another  woman. 

The  best  example  of  the  (Edipus  Complex  in  English 
literature  is  to  be  found,  I  think,  in  the  poem  by  Cowper, 
On  the  Receipt  of  My  Mother's  Picture.  Very  few 
more  touching  tributes  to  a  mother  have  been  written. 
Cowper's  mother  died  when  he  was  six  years  old.  The 
poem  was  written  in  1790,  when  he  was  past  58  years. 
The  poet  never  married  and  found  a  mother  substitute 
in  Mary  Unwin,  who  ministered  to  his  comfort;  to  her 
he  wrote  a  famous  sonnet  and  also  the  well  known  lyric. 

Cowper  wrote  the  poem  celebrating  his  love  for  his 
mother  "not  without  tears."  On  actually  receiving  the 
picture  he  kissed  it  and  hung  it  where  it  was  the  last 
object  he  saw  at  night  and  the  first  that  met  his  eyes 
in  the  morning.  In  the  poem  he  becomes  a  child  again. 
The  intervening  fifty-two  years  drop  out  of  his  life;  he 
is  back  with  his  mother  and  he  narrates  his  infantile 
impressions.  The  psychoanalyst  who  is  aware  that  this 
child's  affection  for  his  mother  is  its  first  love  affair, 
will  observe  that  Cowper  in  his  poem  is  giving  us  remi- 
niscences of  a  childish  fantasy  that  shaped  the  course  of 
his  whole  life.     His  insanity  and  fits  of  depression,  his 


THE  CEDIPUS  COMPLEX  53 

sentimental  and  platonic  attachments  to  old  ladies,  his 
religious  mania,  are  apparent,  in  the  germ,  in  this  poem. 
The  poet  recalls  the  affection  and  tenderness  lavished 
upon  him  by  his  mother;  he  relates  how  he  felt  at  her 
death,  and  was  deceived  by  the  maids  who  told  him  that 
she  would  return.  He  again  sees  her  in  her  nightly  visits 
to  him  in  his  chamber  to  see  him  laid  away  safe  to  sleep. 
He  mentions  the  biscuits  she  gave  him,  dwells  on  her 
constant  flow  of  love  and  on  the  way  she  stroked  his 
head  and  smiled.  He  thus  re-lives  those  days.  One 
should  remember  these  are  the  reflections  of  a  man  fifty- 
eight  years  old.  In  his  troubles  he  still  looks  back  to  her 
for  support.  He  contrasts  his  position  then  with  his  sit- 
uation now.  He  is  suffering  from  depression  and  the 
memory  of  many  griefs.  His  dead  mother  is  like  a  bark 
safe  in  port. 

"But  me  scarce  hoping  to  attain  that  rest, 
Always  from  port  withheld,  always  distressed. 
Me  howling   blasts   drive   devious,   tempests   tossed, 
Sails    ripping,    seams    opening    wide,    and    compass    lost. 
And  day  by  day  some  current's  thwarting  force 
Sets  me  more  distant  from  a  prosperous  course." 

It  of  course  displeases  people  to  have  any  association 
made  between  the  noblest  sentiment,  mother  love,  and 
so  repulsive  a  feature  as  incest.  When  Freud  interpreted 
the  marriage  of  (Edipus  to  his  mother  both  from  a  his- 
torical and  psychological  point  of  view,  and  called  at- 
tention to  the  dream  in  the  play  where  the  Chorus  men- 
tions the  most  obnoxious  dream  that  sometimes  visits 
us  mortals,  that  of  incestuous  relationship  with  the 
mother,  he  opened  up  a  new  field  not  only  in  psychology 
but  in  medicine.  Psychoanalytic  treatment  has  cured 
many  people  whose  neurosis  arose  from  the  early  at- 
tachment to  the  mother  from  which  they  were  finally 


54      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

freed.  Cowper  was  a  victim  of  the  (Edipus  Complex; 
it  was  buried  in  his  unconscious  and  in  this  poem  of  his 
he  shows  that  the  seeds  that  were  sown  fifty-two  years 
ago  were  still  bearing  fruit.  Literature  can  hardly  fur- 
nish so  good  an  example  of  the  influence  of  the  (Edipus 
Complex  through  so  great  a  distance  of  time. 

In  this  poem  Cowper  put  his  hand  unknowingly  on  the 
cause  of  all  his  troubles,  but  he  never  realised  it.  Had 
the  poem  been  written  in  his  twenties  instead  of  his  late 
fifties,  the  subliminal  process  of  freeing  himself  by  art 
from  his  (Edipus  Complex  might  have  made  his  life 
more  pleasant.  The  fact  that  the  poem  was  written  so 
late  shows  that  the  unhealthy  attachment  clung  to  him 
all  his  life;  it  ruined  him  mentally  and  gave  us  his 
strange  personality. 

Freud  has  shown  us  that  psychoneuroses,  like  hysteria 
and  obsessions,  have  their  origin  in  an  infantile  overat- 
tachment  to  the  parent  of  the  opposite  sex,  which  re- 
mains unconscious  but  nevertheless  is  an  active  and  dis- 
turbing element.  It  is  perfectly  natural  that  this  condi- 
tion should  exist  in  infancy,  but  it  disappears  in  the  nor- 
mal person.  If  it  does  not,  one's  entire  life  will  be  in- 
fluenced by  his  inability  to  overcome  the  too  intense 
love  for  mother  or  infantile  hatred  for  the  father.  If  a 
man  has  had  an  unfortunate  repression  in  childhood  such 
as  the  early  death  of  a  mother  he  loved  intensely,  his 
destiny  in  life  will  be  affected.  This  fact  has  been  un- 
derstood by  people  from  time  immemorial.  If  an  ab- 
normal situation  develops  like  a  hatred  in  childhood  for 
the  mother,  the  child's  life  will  be  in  the  future  shaped 
differently  from  that  of  most  people.  People  especially 
are  influenced  in  the  way  they  react  to  the  world  and 
to  love  affairs  by  the  frustration  or  repression  of  their 
earliest  love.    If  they  become  writers  their  literary  work 


THE  (EDIPUS  COMPLEX  55 

is  charged  with  a  certain  tone,  depending  on  the  nature 
of  the  author's  relation  with  his  parents. 

By  this  discovery  of  Freud's  literary  criticism  receives 
a  new  impetus.  IMost  literary  biographers  unconscious- 
ly worked  in  accordance  with  this  theory,  for  they  al- 
ways stated,  where  possible,  the  relations  of  the  writer 
to  his  parents.  Freud  merely  formulated  and  proved 
the  truth  of  the  theory. 

Why  were  Schopenhauer  and  Byron  such  pessimists? 
Among  the  many  causes  that  later  in  life  contributed  to 
impart  the  note  of  woe  and  despair  to  their  work,  was 
the  fact  that  both  men  were  in  unusually  unhappy  rela- 
tions with  their  mothers  and  their  quarrels  with  them 
are  matters  of  literary  history.  Why  are  men  like 
Lafcadio  Hearn  and  Edgar  Allan  Poe  the  unhappy 
Ishmaelites  in  literature,  with  their  morbid  and  weird 
ideas?  They  both  lost  in  infancy  or  early  childhood 
mothers  to  whom  they  were  greatly  attached. 

Facts  like  these  have  great  significance.  It  is  not 
claimed  that  other  factors  do  not  go  into  the  making  of 
the  man,  but  his  relations  with  his  parents  is  the  earliest 
cause  in  determining  his  mental,  moral  and  emotional 
make  up.  A  m.an  who  hates  his  father  sees  in  many  of 
his  future  enemies  the  image  of  his  father.  One  who 
is  overattached  to  his  mother  looks  unconsciously  for 
her  counterpart,  among  women,  in  seeking  his  mate.  He 
sees  a  reminder  of  his  father  in  those  people  who  in- 
terfere with  his  plans,  ambitions  and  conduct.  He 
sees  the  father  in  the  rivals  he  has  in  love  affairs,  just 
as  in  infancy  he  found  in  his  father  his  rival  in  the 
affections  of  his  mother.  This  seemingly  absurd  and 
repellent  view  has  been  scientifically  demonstrated  by 
Freud  and  his  disciples  so  that  I  refer  objectors  to  it, 
to  their  works. 


S6      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

The  influence  of  step-mothers  has  always  been  noted 
in  ancient  times  and  the  amount  of  material  in  folk  lore 
dealing  with  the  effects  of  step-mothers  on  the  lives  of 
children  is  large.  We  are  all  familiar  with  the  Cinder- 
ella story.  Literature  is  rich  in  examples  of  writers 
whose  step-mothers  coloured  their  lives  for  them.  Strind- 
berg's  misogyny  no  doubt  dates  back  to  his  early  dis- 
like for  his  step-mother. 

All  literary  works  show  between  the  lines  a  writer's 
early  attitude  towards  his  parents.  An  interesting  vol- 
ume might  be  written  on  the  relations  of  literary  men  to 
their  mothers.  We  would  find  the  mother  unconsciously 
influencing  literary  masterpieces.  We  might  find  the 
misanthropy  of  Moliere's  Le  Misanthrope  and  the  cyni- 
cism of  Thackeray  in  Vanity  Fair  each  due  to  the  fact 
that  both  these  men  while  boys  lost  their  mothers,  though 
later  personal  tragedies  influenced  them.  Thackeray 
loved  Mrs.  Brookfield,  a  married  woman,  and  Moliere 
was  married  to  a  coquette. 

The  fact  that  the  mothers  of  Coleridge  and  Dickens 
had  almost  no  influence  upon  them  is  seen  in  their  work. 

The  relation  of  the  only  child  to  its  parents  must  be 
mentioned  here.  The  studies  of  both  Freud  and  Brill 
in  regard  to  the  later  neurotic  condition  of  the  only 
child  applies  to  literary  men  who  were  only  children. 
John  Ruskin,  although  subjected  to  a  strict  education, 
was  petted  and  spoiled  nevertheless  like  the  average  only 
child.  His  precociousness  made  his  parents  admire  and 
worship  him.  He  was  attached  to  his  "papa"  and 
"mamma"  for  the  rest  of  their  lives.  He  was  not  young 
when  they  died  and  he  preserved  the  attitude  of  the 
child  towards  them.  His  mother  lived  to  a  great  age. 
When  he  was  separated  from  his  wife  he  returned  to 


THE  (EDIPUS  COMPLEX  57 

his  parents  to  live.  His  later  tragedy,  the  unmanly 
love  for  Rose  Le  Touche,  which  forms  a  most  humiliating 
affair  in  his  life,  shows  he  was  a  neurotic  from  childhood. 
He  was  in  the  later  part  of  his  life  subject  to  periods 
of  psychosis.  In  his  actions  he  was  eccentric;  he  would 
be  invited  to  lecture  on  art  and  would  give  a  talk  on 
economics. 

His  passions  were  love  of  beauty  in  the  early  part  of 
his  life,  and  interest  in  economic  reform  in  his  middle 
and  old  age. 

We  must  always  remember  he  was  an  only  child.  In 
his  autobiography  Praeterita,  he  refers  often  to  his 
"papa"  and  "mamma." 

Alexander  Pope,  the  poet,  was  also  a  spoiled  child, 
though  he  had  a  half  sister. 

The  seeds  of  Browning's  optimistic  philosophy  were 
sown  in  the  normal  and  quiet  affection  that  existed  be- 
tween him  and  his  mother.  There  was  no  mad  attach- 
ment, no  repression,  no  ill  feeling,  and  hence  he  never 
became  an  abnormal  or  morbid  poet.  He  had  less  neu- 
roticism  than  any  of  the  great  English  poets  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  His  optimism  was  also  fostered  by  his 
happy  marriage  to  Elizabeth  Barrett. 

Freud's  theories  about  the  relations  of  the  child  to  the 
parents  are  borne  out  whenever  we  consider  the  life  of  a 
poet. 

n 

The  birth  of  a  new  child  also  has  an  influence  on  the 
psychic  life  of  the  child.  There  is  also  always  some- 
thing in  the  relation  between  brothers  and  sisters  that 
affects  their  lives.  Hence  the  subject  of  incest  in  htera- 
ture  is  of  paramount  import,  repulsive  as  the  theme  may 


58       THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

be.*  It  has  been  most  exhaustively  studied  in  uncon- 
scious manifestations  in  fictitious  characters  by  Otto 
Rank  in  his  Incest  Motiv  (1912),  which  should  be  trans- 
lated into  English. 

The  only  phase  of  the  subject  I  wish  to  touch  on  here 
is  the  close  relationship  that  prevails  in  some  cases  be- 
tween brother  and  sister  among  authors.  The  brother 
and  sister  complex,  as  it  may  be  called,  shows  its  ef- 
fects upon  the  literary  work  of  the  writer. 

The  extreme  attachment  of  Renan  to  his  sister  Henri- 
etta and  of  Wordsworth  to  his  sister  Dorothy  had  much 
to  do  with  the  nature  of  the  literary  work  of  these  men. 
The  attachment  explained  from  the  point  of  view  of  psy- 
choanalysis amounts  to  this.  The  affection  which  each 
man  has  for  his  mother  is  transferred  to  the  sister  who 
is  the  nearest  resemblance  to  the  mother.  This  new  fix- 
ation may  remain  too  long  and  the  man  hence  loves  no 
other  woman.  The  affection  is  usually  at  its  height  in 
youth  before  the  man  marries  another,  in  case  he  does 
marry.  Both  Renan  and  Wordsworth  married  after  they 
were  thirty.  The  incest  idea  was  unconsciously  present 
but  repressed  by  the  natural  disgust  the  men  felt  as  a 
result  of  education  and  training.  In  all  likelihood  had 
each  of  these  authors  been  separated  from  his  sister  in 
infancy  and  met  her  years  later  in  youth,  he  might  have 
fallen  in  love  with  her. 

The  effects  of  this  extreme  brotherly  and  sisterly  love 
have  been  studied  but  not  yet  exhaustively.  No  doubt 
much  of  the  effeminacy  of  Renan,  the  gentleness,  the 
moral  tone,  the  kindliness,  we  find  in  his  writings  was 
due  to  this  attachment  to  his  sister.     He  dedicated  his 

*Edgar  Saltus  has  touched  on  the  theme  in  a  few  of  his 
novels,  notably  The  Monster. 


THE  (EDIPUS  COMPLEX  59 

Lije  of  Jesus  to  her.  As  I  show  elsewhere  he  drew  him- 
self in  this  book,  and  his  love  for  his  sister  was  a  great 
factor  in  his  making  Jesus  somewhat  effeminate.  He  has 
also  left  a  tribute  to  her  in  his  My  Sister  Henrietta. 

The  influence  of  Wordsworth's  sister  upoh  him  mani- 
fested itself  in  several  ways,  one  of  which  is  the  utter  re- 
spectability of  his  poetry,  and  another  the  almost  total 
absence  of  any  reference  to  love  or  sex.  His  sister  was 
largely  responsible  for  the  trend  of  her  brother's  mind. 
She  gave  him  eyes  and  ears,  as  he  put  it,  helped  him  to 
observe  nature  and  was  herself  a  great  force  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  the  new  poetry.  Her  influence  has  been  under- 
rather  than  over-estimated.  Another  reason  for  the  ab- 
sence of  love  poetry  in  Wordsworth  may  have  been  due 
to  a  guilty  conscience,  as  he  left  an  illegitimate  daugh- 
ter in  France,  he  not  being  able  to  marry  the  mother 
for  justifiable  reasons.  Professor  Harper  first  published 
the  story. 

As  one  might  have  expected,  neither  Henrietta  Renan 
nor  Dorothy  Wordsworth  ever  married,  though  the  latter 
is  said  to  have  been  in  love  with  Coleridge. 

Charles  Lamb,  the  Gentle  Elia,  owes  probably  much 
of  his  quality  of  gentleness  to  his  sister  Mary,  "Bridget 
Elia."  She  appears  in  his  famous  essays  and  they  col- 
laborated together  in  writing  poems  and  tales.  His 
kindness  was  no  doubt  enhanced  by  his  pity  for  her  un- 
fortunate fits  of  insanity  and  by  the  fact  that  in  one 
of  these  fits  she  had  killed  her  mother. 

The  love  felt  for  their  sisters  by  Byron  and  Shelley 
made  the  subject  of  incest  a  common  topic  of  discussion  be- 
tween them.  They  went  so  far  as  to  question  whether  the 
law  or  feeling  against  marriage  between  brother  and  sis- 
ter was  not  a  convention  based  on  ungrounded  prejudice. 
Byron's  love  for  his  sister,  Mrs.  Augusta  Leigh,  did  not 


6o      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

create  feminine  qualities  in  him.  She  was  to  him  a  sort 
of  refuge  from  the  disappointment  of  other  love  affairs, 
a  shelter  when  public  opinion  was  against  him.  His 
poems  to  her  rank  among  his  best.  He  may  have  had 
unconscious  incest  thoughts  in  regard  to  her,  and  he  may 
have  drawn  himself  as  married  to  her  in  Cain,  where  she 
may  be  Cain's  sister  Adah.  But  the  accusation  that  By- 
ron ever  indulged  in  unlawful  relationship  with  his  sis- 
ter is  a  groundless  libel.  We  have  no  evidence  for  it 
and  we  have  no  right  to  make  any  assumptions  because 
of  misinterpretations  put  on  his  work.  Between  the 
thought  and  the  deed  there  is  a  wide  gap.  Carlyle  once 
said,  the  hand  is  on  the  trigger,  but  the  man  is  not  a 
murderer  before  the  trigger  is  pulled.  The  story  of  the 
reputed  incest  with  his  sister  was  first  published  by  Mrs. 
Harriet  Beecher  Stowe.  The  myth  was  revived  again  by 
"documentary"  evidence  furnished  by  Lord  Lovelace,  a 
descendant  of  Byron,  and  published  in  Astarte.  A  later 
woman  biographer,  Ethel  C.  Mayne,  accepts  the  story. 
The  entire  tale  is  ably  demolished  by  Richard  Edggumbe 
in  his  Byron,  the  Last  Phase,  where  he  applies,  without 
a  knowledge  of  Freud's  views,  psychoanalytic  methods 
to  Byron.    Brandes  also  defended  Byron  years  ago. 

Lord  Lovelace  published  a  love  letter  alleged  to  have 
been  written  to  Augusta  Leigh,  Byron's  sister,  dated  May 
17,  1819,  but  this  letter  was  really  meant  for  Mary  Cha- 
worth,  to  whom  he  wrote:  "I  not  long  ago  attached  my- 
self to  a  Venetian  for  no  earthly  reason  (although  a  pret- 
ty woman)  but  because  she  was  called  .  .  .  and  she  often 
remarked  (without  knowing  the  reason)  how  fond  I  was 
of  the  name."  The  name  which  is  crossed  out  is  Mary, 
The  mistress  was  the  Venetian  Mariana  (the  Italian  for 
Mary  Anne)  Segati,  the  poet's  mistress  from  November, 
1816,  to  February,  181 8,    He  was  thus  showing  Mary 


THE  CEDIPUS  COMPLEX  6i 

Chaworth  he  still  loved  her.  It  is  not  likely  he  would 
try  to  impress  Augusta  with  his  love  for  a  woman  named 
Mary  and  again  not  probable  that  he  would  tell  his  sis- 
ter of  his  liaison  when  he  and  his  sister  were  supposed 
to  love  each  other.  The  tone  of  this  letter  differs  from 
that  of  others  to  his  sister. 

In  1820  Byron  was  writing  in  his  Don  Juan  that  he  has 
a  passion  for  the  name  Mary,  that  it  still  calls  up  the 
realm  of  fancy  where  he  beholds  what  never  was  to  be, 
and  that  he  is  not  yet  quite  free  from  the  spell.  He  loved 
Mary  Chaworth  all  his  life. 

Byron's  alleged  criminal  attachment  to  his  sister  was 
supposed  to  be  the  mystery  in  Manfred's  life,  revealed  by 
these  words  in  the  second  act,  when  wine  is  offered  to 
him: 

"'tis  blood — my  blood!  the  pure  warm  stream 
Which  ran  in  the  veins  of  my  fathers  and  ours, 
When  we  were  in  our  youth  and  had  one  heart, 
And  loved  each  other  as  we  should  not  love, 
And  this  was  shed." 

In  a  poem  published  a  year  later,  The  Duel,  there  is 
also  a  reference  to  blood — "And  then  there  was  the 
curse  of  blood."  This  line  and  the  passage  in  Manured 
merely  refer  to  the  fact  that  an  ancestor  of  Byron,  the 
fifth  Lord,  not  a  direct  ancestor,  killed  Mr.  Chaworth 
whose  blood  flowed  in  IMary's  veins.  Astarte  then  in 
Manfred  is  Mary  Chaworth  and  not  Augusta. 

Shelley  had  a  great  affection  for  his  sister  Elizabeth 
and  wanted  his  friend  Hogg  to  marry  her.  She  returned 
to  her  father  and  Shelley  was  broken  hearted  that  she 
drifted  away  from  his  own  influence.  He  thought  she 
was  not  lost  to  him  and  wanted  to  take  her  with  him 
to  the  west  of  Ireland  in  18 14.    He  continued  to  love 


62       THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

her,  and  this  influenced  his  work.  In  the  first  edition 
of  the  Revolt  of  Islam  he  made  Laon  and  Cynthia, 
who  were  brother  and  sister,  lovers.  The  publisher 
made  the  poet  regretfully  change  certain  passages,  most- 
ly single  lines.  In  the  early  preface  the  poet  concluded 
he  could  not  see  why  an  innocent  act  like  love  of  brother 
and  sister  for  each  other  should  arouse  the  hatred  of 
the  multitude. 

In  Rosalind  and  Helen  he  describes  Helen  visiting  a 
spot  where  a  sister  and  brother  had  given  themselves 
up  to  one  another,  and  had  a  child,  who  was  torn  by 
people  limb  from  limb.  The  mother  was  stabbed  while 
the  youth  was  saved  by  a  priest,  to  be  burned  for  God's 
grace.     Their  ghosts  visited  the  spot. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE   AUTHOR   ALWAYS    UNCONSCIOUSLY    IN    HIS    WORK 


"No  man,"  says  Dr.  Johnson  in  his  Life  of  Cowley, 
"needs  to  be  so  burdened  with  life  as  to  squander  it  in 
voluntary  dreams  of  fictitious  occurrences.  The  man 
that  sits  down  to  suppose  himself  charged  with  treason 
or  peculation,  and  heats  his  mind  to  an  elaborate  purga- 
tion of  his  character  from  crimes  which  he  was  never 
within  the  possibility  of  committing  differs  only  by 
the  infrequency  of  his  folly  from  him  who  praises  beauty 
which  he  never  saw;  complains  of  jealousy  which  he 
never  felt;  supposes  himself  sometimes  invited  and 
sometimes  forsaken;  fatigues  his  fancy  and  ransacks  his 
memory  for  images  which  may  exhibit  the  gaiety  of 
hope,  or  the  gloominess  of  despair;  and  dresses  his 
imaginary  Chloris  or  Phyllis  sometimes  in  flowers  fad- 
ing as  her  beauty,  and  sometimes  in  gems  as  lasting  as 
her  virtues." 

The  shrewd  doctor  displayed  great  insight  into  the 
psychology  of  authorship  in  these  remarks.  They  form 
a  good  argument  against  those  who  deny  the  importance 
of  the  personal  note  in  literature. 

One  objection  that  these  critics  make  is  that  an  author 
may  deliberately  conceal  himself  and  that  in  fact  writers 
have  often  done  so.    Thus  a  man  who  is  happily  married 

63 


64      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

may  write  a  novel  or  play,  seething  with  attacks  upon  the 
marriage  institution,  full  of  cynical  and  bitter  statements 
about  women  and  love.    The  author  may  say  that  book 
does  not  represent  his  own  life.    It  does,  however,  in  that 
it  shows  his  reaction  to  seeing  life  of  this  kind  lived  by 
others;  it  means  that  he  has  been  struck  by  the  cruelty 
or  injuctice  of  it,  and  that  unconsciously  he  reflected 
that  he  too  might  but  for  a  chance  throw  of  the  dice  of 
fate  be  in  the  same  position.    His  attitude  towards  the 
lives  of  others  is  part  of  his  own  life.    The  fact  that  he 
has   suffered   pain   by   witnessing   other   people's   lives, 
shows  that  his  own  psyche  is  affected.     The  life  de- 
scribed has  been  lived  by  some  of  his  friends  or  rela- 
tives, and  some  of  his  ancestors.     The  griefs  of  others 
often  affect  us,  if  not  like  our  own,  at  least  strongly 
enough  to  make  us  devote  ourselves  to  mitigating  them. 
Investigation  however  will  show  that  the  great  works 
voicing  sorrows  were  experienced  by  those  who  wrote 
about  them.  It  is  an  unhappily  married  writer  like  George 
Sand,  who  has  given  us  the  novels  that  deal  with  the  mar- 
riage problem.     It  is  a  disappointed  lover  like  Heine 
or  De  Musset  who  writes  the  saddest  love  poems.    Life 
is  made  up  of  so  many  sorrows  that  writers  do  not  have 
to  go  out  of  their  way  to  invent  them.    The  rich  man 
does    not    imagine   himself    starving   and    write   books 
where  the  pangs  of  hunger  are  described.     Such  litera- 
ture is  written  usually  by  a  man  who  has  starved,  a  man 
like  George  Gissing.     The  financier  who  has  never  had 
any  business  troubles  as  a  rule  will  not  waste  energy 
nor  court  pain  by  trying  to  figure  how  a  bankrupt  feels 
and  put  those  feelings  in  art.    Such  feelings  are  usually 
delineated  by  a  man  who  has  himself  been  bankrupt 
like  Balzac  in  his  C(Bsar  Birroteau.  Of  course,  no  writer 
could  have  felt  all  the  emotions  he  describes.     Balzac, 


AUTHOR  UNCONSCIOUSLY  IN  HIS  WORK       65 

for  example,  never  had  the  troubles  of  Goriot,  for  he 
never  had  children  to  be  ungrateful  to  him.  But  even 
here  there  must  have  been  some  personal  affair,  for  the 
author  had  suffered  from  ingratitude  of  some  other  kind 
and  all  ingratitude  hurts. 

The  author  again  may  write  merely  for  amusement  or 
commercial  purposes.  In  these  cases  it  is  true  the 
author's  personality  may  not  be  in  his  work  any  more 
than  an  editorial  writer's  real  opinions  are  in  the  edi- 
torial which  he  writes  in  accordance  with  the  policy  of 
his  paper.  A  writer  may  study  the  demands  of  the  pub- 
lic and  try  to  comply  with  them.  In  cases  like  these 
the  reader  may  detect  the  insincerity  or  learn  of  it  by 
clues.  Here  the  works  are  not  representative  of  the 
author  and  he  can  no  more  be  judged  by  them,  than  a 
person  who  would  invent  or  falsify  his  dreams  in  re- 
porting them  to  a  psychoanalyst.  Certainly  these  would 
not  reveal  the  unconscious.  And  I  realise  much  "litera- 
ture" is  of  this  nature. 

An  author  again  may  purposely  conceal  himself,  but 
the  key  once  discovered  reveals  him.  Deliberate  and 
continuous  concealment  by  the  author  of  his  person- 
ality can  often  be  detected.  We  know  Merimee  and 
Nietzsche  were  personally  entirely  different  from  what 
some  of  their  books  would  lead  us  to  suspect.  Merimee 
was  not  cold  nor  Nietzsche  cruel;  one  was  too  emotional 
and  the  other  too  genteel. 

n 

A  good  example  of  the  follies  that  may  follow  by  the 
refusal  to  adopt  psychoanalytic  methods  in  literature 
is  seen  in  the  case  of  Charlotte  Bronte. 

It  had  always  been  noticed  that  several  similar  mor 


66      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

tives  appeared  in  her  novels;  the  love  of  a  girl  for  her 
school  master,  a  married  man;  an  intense  craving  for 
affection;  and  pictures  of  sad  partings.  It  was  known 
that  Charlotte  had  attended  the  school  of  M.  Heger, 
a  married  man  in  Brussels,  that  she  had  left  it  and  then 
returned,  and  later  departed  finally.  There  were  critics 
who  suspected  that  Charlotte  was  really  in  love  with  her 
teacher  and  that  various  scenes  in  her  novels  had  their 
counterpart  in  reality.  Among  these  were  Sir  Wemyss 
Reid,  Augustine  Birrel  and  Angus  Mackay.  But  other 
critics  scoffed  at  the  idea.  So  great  a  Bronte  student 
as  Clement  Shorter  said  it  would  be  the  act  of  treachery 
to  pry  into  the  writer's  heart.  May  Sinclair,  especially, 
repudiated  with  indignation  the  possibility  that  Bronte 
drew  on  actual  facts  for  her  novels;  and  her  purposes 
in  writing  her  The  Three  Brontes,  was  to  demolish  the 
theory  that  Charlotte  Bronte  was  in  love  with  M.  Heger. 
But  shortly  after  this  work  appeared  there  were  pub- 
lished in  1913  in  the  London  Times  one  of  the  "scoops" 
of  the  age,  four  pathetic  heart  burning  love  letters  by 
Charlotte  Bronte  to  M.  Heger,  written  without  pride, 
pleading  for  a  little  affection.  The  secret  was  out; 
there  could  be  no  doubt  that  the  scenes  of  unrequitted 
love  in  her  novels  were  due  to  her  own  unreciprocated 
love  for  M.  Heger  and  that  Charlotte  was  Lucy  Snowe 
and  Jane  Eyre  in  Villette  and  Jane  Eyre,  respectively. 
Miss  Sinclair  wrote  an  article  attacking  the  publishing  of 
the  letters  which  had  disproved  her  theory. 

An  excellent  study  of  the  influences  of  Charlotte's  sad 
love  affair  on  her  work  was  made  by  Mrs.  Ellis  H.  Chad- 
wick  in  her  In  the  Footsteps  of  the  Brontes.  It  is  really 
a  psychoanalytical  study,  for  it  traces  the  novelist's 
work  to  her  repressions.  Another  study  has  been  prom- 
ised by  Lucille  Dooley,  who  made  several  abstracts  of 


AUTHOR  UNCONSCIOUSLY  IN  HIS  WORK       67 

psychoanalytical  studies  of  genius  from  essays  by 
Freud's  disciples,  in  the  American  Journal  of  Psychology. 

I  just  wish  to  point  out  a  few  of  the  influences  of 
Bronte's  love  affair  upon  her  work.  Charlotte  Bronte 
published  Jane  Eyre  in  October,  1847,  ^^^  wrote  in 
1848:  "Details,  situations  which  I  do  not  understand 
and  cannot  personally  inspect,  I  would  not  for  the 
world  meddle  with.  .  .  .  Besides  not  one  feeling  on  any 
subject,  public  or  private,  will  I  ever  affect  that  I  do 
not  really  experience," 

After  she  left  Brussels  on  December  29,  1843,  she 
wrote  that  she  suffered  much  and  that  she  would  never 
forget  what  the  parting  cost  her.  This  departure  in- 
spired the  description  of  the  flight  from  Thornfield 
(which  is  Brussels  in  Jane  Eyre),  the  part  of  the  novel 
which  she  told  her  biographer  appealed  to  her  most. 

In  her  letters  to  Heger  which  were  published  she  begs 
for  sympathy  as  a  beggar  for  crumbs  from  the  table 
of  the  rich  man.  In  the  second  letter  written  in  1844 
she  tells  how  she  waited  six  months  for  a  letter  and  she 
sent  this  one  through  friends.  In  VUlette,  in  the  twen- 
ty-fourth chapter,  she  wrote  how  Lucy  Snowe  studied 
to  quench  her  madness  because  she  received  no  letters. 
"My  hour  of  torment  was  the  post  hour."  She  wrote 
that  in  all  the  land  of  Israel  there  was  but  one  Saul,  cer- 
tainly but  one  David  to  soothe  him.  Heger  was  the 
David,  she  says  symbolically,  to  soothe  her.  (In  the 
novel  Heger  is  called  Paul  Carl  David  Emanuel). 

VUlette  is  the  most  autobiographical  of  her  novels.  It 
appeared  in  the  beginning  of  1853  and  had  occupied  the 
author  the  previous  two  years.  It  cost  her  great  effort 
and  she  recalled  in  it  the  sleepless  nights  in  Brussels 
about  which  she  told  Mrs.  Gaskell;  her  anxieties 
were  caused  by  her  hopeless  love  for  M.  Heger.    She  knew 


68       THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

that  the  novel  would  be  recognised  by  the  Hegers,  and 
she  printed  in  it  a  statement  that  the  author  reserved 
the  rights  of  translation,  as  she  feared  M.  Heger  would 
read  it  if  it  were  translated  into  French.  She  first  had 
wanted  to  publish  it  anonymously.  She  also  refused  to 
make  a  happy  ending  which  was  wanted  by  the  pub- 
lishers; she  would  not  have  Paul  and  Lucy  many,  for 
such  was  not  the  case  in  real  life.  (Jane  Eyre,  however, 
married  Rochester.)  The  book  is  full  of  the  Hegers, 
even  their  children  being  in  it.  Madame  Heger  does  not 
figure  in  a  favourable  light,  and  one  could  hardly  expect 
a  girl  to  admire  the  wife  of  the  man  she  loved  herself. 

The  interval  between  the  first  and  last  of  the  letters 
published  in  the  Times  is  about  two  years,  which  covers 
the  saddest  period  of  her  life,  the  time  she  left  Brussels 
finally  on  December  29th,  1843,  ^^'^  the  end  of  1845. 
She  had  gone  to  Belgium  originally  in  February,  1842; 
she  was  then  twenty-six  and  Heger  was  seven  years  her 
senior.  She  left  in  November,  1842,  when  her  aunt 
died,  and  returned  in  January,  1843.  Heger  wanted  her 
to  return  and  Charlotte  was  only  too  eager,  though  she 
could  have  received  a  better  position.  She  describes  this 
second  trip  in  VUlette.  She  left  finally  because  Mme. 
Heger  really  did  not  want  her  services, 

Charlotte's  brother  Branwell  also  fell  in  love  with  a 
married  person,  the  wife  of  his  employer. 

Charlotte  Bronte  drew  herself  as  a  man  in  her  first 
novel,  The  Professor.  She  calls  herself  William  Crims- 
worth,  who  loves  his  teacher,  Mile.  Renter.  The  account 
she  gives  of  the  parting  of  the  student  with  his  teacher 
is  again  reminiscent  of  her  memories  of  parting  from  M. 
Heger.  She  drew  herself  then  just  once  in  this  role  of  the 
ipale  lover,. 


AUTHOR  UNCONSCIOUSLY  IN  HIS  WORK       69 

"The  principal  male  characters,"  says  Mrs.  Chadwlck, 
"to  be  found  in  Charlotte  Bronte's  great  novels  were 
those  drawn  from  M.  Heger,  M.  Pelet,  Rochester,  Rob- 
ert Moore,  Louis  Moore  and  Paul  Emanuel." 

Hence  we  may  conclude  as  a  rule  that  when  a  motive 
appears  often,  or  a  note  persists  continuously,  in  a 
writer's  work,  there  were  reasons  therefor  in  his  per- 
sonal life.    Charlotte  Bronte  was  no  exception  to  the  rule. 

She  married  in  1854  but  did  not  really  love  her  hus- 
band. Poor  Charlotte  Bronte!  She  married  late  and 
not  for  love,  and  all  her  youth  she  craved  love  and 
wanted  to  marry  and  be  a  mother.  She  betrays  herself 
in  a  dream  reported  in  the  twenty-first  chapter  of  Jane 
Eyre.  Had  she  known  that  dreams  are  realised  uncon- 
scious wishes  she  might  never  have  recounted  this  dream, 
a  frequent  one  among  women,  both  married  and  unmar- 
ried, who  have  no  children. 

"During  the  past  week  scarcely  a  night  had  gone  over 
my  couch  that  had  not  brought  with  it  a  dream  of  an 
infant,  which  I  sometimes  hushed  in  my  arms,  sometimes 
dandled  on  my  knee,  sometimes  watched  playing  with 
daisies  on  a  lawn,  or,  again,  dabbling  its  hands  in  run- 
ning water.  It  was  wailing  this  night  and  laughing  the 
next;  now  it  nestled  close  to  me,  and  now  it  ran  from 
me;  but  whatever  mood  the  apparition  evinced,  what- 
ever aspect  it  wore,  it  failed  not  for  seven  successive 
nights  to  meet  me  the  moment  I  entered  the  land  of 
slumber." 

Literature  can  scarcely  present  a  more  personal  con- 
fession in  disguised  form.  That  dream  of  Jane  Eyre's 
was  Chariotte  Bronte's,  who  wanted  to  have  children  by 
M.  Heger. 


^a      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE' 


III 

The  value  of  the  study  of  an  author's  works  in  con- 
nection with  his  life  is  also  seen  in  the  case  of  Dickens. 
An  excellent  book  by  Edwin  Pugh,  Charles  Dickens 
Originals,  really  applies  the  psychoanalytic  method,  to 
a  large  extent,  to  Dickens's  work. 

Some  of  the  main  influences  in  Dickens's  life  and 
work  were  due  to  two  girls,  Maria  Beadnell,  his  boyhood 
sweetheart,  who  rejected  him,  and  Mary  Hogarth,  his 
wife's  sister,  who  died  young.  These  women  were  re- 
spectively the  models  of  Dora  in  David  Copperfield,  and 
Little  Nell. 

The  story  of  Dickens's  early  love  became  known  a 
half  dozen  years  ago  when  his  letters  to  Miss  Beadnell 
were  published.  He  was  eighteen  when  he  loved  her, 
and  when  she  finally  rejected  him  he  wrote  to  her  say- 
ing he  could  never  love  another.  Not  long  afterwards 
he  married.  In  1855,  when  he  was  nearly  forty-four 
years  old,  he  said  in  a  letter  to  his  future  biographer, 
Forster,  that  he  could  never  open  David  Copperfield 
"without  going  wandering  away  over  the  ashes  of  all 
that  youth  and  hope,  in  the  wildest  manner."  He  was 
thinking  of  his  love  for  Maria,  for  the  reference  in  the 
letter  is  to  Dora,  of  whom  Maria  was  the  prototype. 
She  also  appears  as  Dolly  Varden  in  Barnaby  Rudge. 
He  again  draws  her  in  Estella  in  Great  Expectations, 
and  describes  the  sufferings  that  Pip,  who  is  himself, 
had  undergone  on  account  of  her. 

In  1855  Maria  Beadnell,  who  had  become  Mrs.  Henry 
Winter,  wrote  to  the  author,  and  he  agreed  to  meet 
her  clandestinely.  He  was  unhappily  married  but  not  yet 
separated  from  his  wife.     The  separation  came  a  few 


AUTHOR  UNCONSCIOUSLY  IN  HIS  WORK       yr 

years  later.  Dickens  was  disillusioned  when  he  met 
Mrs.  Winter;  she  was  homely  and  stout.  He  describes 
his  disillusionment  in  Little  Dorrit,  where  Mrs.  Winter 
is  Flora  Finching.  "Flora  whom  he  had  left  a  lily,  had 
become  a  peony."  And  then  he  gives  way  to  a  personal 
pathetic  cry.  He  could  no  longer  love  his  first  love,  he 
was  not  in  love  with  his  wife;  with  all  his  fame  and 
wealth  he  had  missed  the  greatest  pleasure  in  life.  "That 
he  should  have  missed  so  much,  and  at  his  time  of  life 
should  look  so  far  about  him  for  any  staff  to  bear 
him  company  upon  his  downward  journey  and  cheer 
it — was  a  just  regret."  He  looked  into  the  dying  fire 
by  which  he  sat  and  reflected  that  he  too  would  pass 
through  such  changes  and  be  gone.  Thus  we  can  trace 
the  childwife  Dora  and  the  sufferings  of  Pip  to  Dickens's 
first  love. 

Mary  Hogarth,  who  helped  to  shape  Dickens's  ideals 
of  women,  was  a  younger  sister  of  his  wife,  and  she  died 
as  a  girl.  Dickens  was  so  shocked  by  this  that  he  could 
not  go  on  for  a  while  with  his  Pickwick  Papers  and 
Oliver  Twist.  This  was  about  1837,  when  he  was 
twenty-five.  He  has  left  a  number  of  records  of  the 
great  and  lasting  effect  upon  him  of  the  grief  he  felt. 
He  describes  a  dream  where  he  sees  her;  he  thinks  of 
her  when  in  America.  She  was  his  model  for  Little  Nell 
and  he  wrote  that  old  wounds  bled  afresh  when  he  wrote 
this  story.  But  she  was  responsible  for  all  those  pure, 
bloodless  girls,  lacking  in  individuality,  which  fill  his 
pages.  She  died  when  she  was  innocent  of  worldly 
guile,  and  unconsciously  was  the  type  before  him  when 
he  drew  women.  He  could  not  understand  the  modern 
intellectual  woman  and  he  owes  this  literary  deficiency  to 
his  misfortune.  "And  so  he  presents  to  us,"  says  Mr. 
Pugh,  "that  galaxy  of  amazing  dolls  variously  christened 


72      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

Rose  Maylie,  Kate  Nickleby,  Madeline  Bray,  Little 
Nell,  Emma  Haredale,  Mary  Graham,  Florence  Dom- 
bey,  Agnes  VVickfield,  Ada  Clare  and  Lucy  Manette. . . . 
Modern  criticism  has  exhausted  itself  in  scathing  de- 
nunciation of  these  poor  puppets.  And  yet  there  is  per- 
haps something  to  be  said  in  defence  of  the  convention 
that  created  them.  Dickens  was  never  a  self-conscious 
artist.  He  had  indeed  no  use  for  the  word  Art."  His 
female  types  were  the  result  of  his  faith  in  the  perfec- 
tion of  woman  as  he  saw  it  in  Mary  Hogarth. 

Two  women  who  did  not  influence  his  work  are  his 
mother  and  his  wife.  He  entertained  no  affection  for 
either.  He  had  no  pleasant  memories  of  his  mother  be- 
cause she  was  indifferent  to  his  sufferings  when  he 
worked  as  a  boy  in  the  blacking  factory.  She  is  drawn 
in  Mrs.  Nickleby.  David  Copperfield's  mother  may  also 
have  been  an  idealised  portrait  of  Dickens's  own  mother, 
but  Mrs.  Copperfield  resembles  more  the  Little  Nells 
and  other  characters  based  on  Mary  Hogarth  in  her 
colourlessness,  and  her  goodness.  Dickens's  own  wife 
scarcely,  if  ever,  served  as  a  model  for  any  of  his  female 
characters.  They  lived  apart  for  the  last  twelve  years 
of  the  author's  life. 

Dickens's  greatness  lies  in  his  portrayals  of  male  char- 
acters. He  was  poor  in  his  female  characterisation  be- 
cause Mary  Hogarth  unconsciously  influenced  him  into 
drawing  spineless  women  and  he  kept  the  painful  mem- 
ories of  his  love  affair  with  Maria  Beadnell  suppressed 
except  to  caricature  her  in  Dora  and  Estella  and  Flora. 
When  we  think  of  Dickens  we  have  memories  of  men 
like  Sam  Weller,  Micawber  (Dickens's  father),  Uriah 
Heep,  Pecksniff,  and  others.  Why  he  especially  ex- 
celled in  characterisation  of  these  types  familiarly  known 
all  over  the  world,  and  how  he  was  led  to  that  peculiar 


AUTHOR  UNCONSCIOUSLY  IN  HIS  WORK       73 

"exaggerative"  portrayal  of  eccentric  creatures  is  a 
theme  which  can  be  explained  by  psychoanalytic  the- 
ories and  the  application  of  Freud's  theories  of  the 
comic,  and  a  study  of  the  originals  and  the  types 
Dickens  met  in  his  life.  It  should  also  be  remem- 
bered that  this  style  of  character  portrayal  was  com- 
mon in  Dickens's  youth,  and  he  also  imitated  other 
writers. 

rv 

Swinburne  has  been  usually  regarded  as  an  imper- 
sonal poet,  though  some  of  his  critics  have  tried  to  see 
in  the  accounts  of  derelictions  from  the  path  of  virtue 
in  the  poems,  records  of  actual  experiences.  The  poet 
has  himself  written  something  on  the  subject.  In  the 
Dedicatory  Epistle  of  1904  to  the  collected  edition  of 
his  works  he  wrote:  "There  are  photographs  from  life 
in  the  book  {Poems  and  Ballads,  1865);  there  are 
sketches  from  imagination.  Some  which  keen-sighted 
criticism  has  dismissed  with  a  smile  as  ideal  or  imagi- 
nary were  as  real  and  actual  as  they  well  could  be;  others 
which  have  been  taken  for  obvious  transcripts  from 
memory  were  utterly  fantastic  or  dramatic.  .  .  .  Friend- 
ly and  kindly  critics,  English  and  foreign,  have  detected 
ignorance  of  the  subject  in  poems  taken  straight  from 
the  life,  and  have  protested  that  they  could  not  believe 
me  were  I  to  swear  that  poems  entirely  or  mainly  fanci- 
ful were  not  faithful  expressions  or  transcriptions  of  the 
writer's  actual  experience  and  personal  emotion." 

The  poet  does  not  tell  us  which  poems  were  fanciful 
and  which  were  not.  He  does  let  us  know  that  some  of 
the  poems  were  the  record  of  his  own  experience.  I 
propose  to  show  that  many  of  the  poet's  best  known 
poems  had  a  personal  background  and  thus  to  differ 


74      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

witJi  the  theory  usually  prevalent  that  Swinburne,  in- 
stead of  having  sung  his  own  soul,  was  but  a  clever 
manipulator  of  rhyme  and  metre.  The  clue  to  the  in- 
vestigation is  furnished  by  our  knowledge  that  one  of 
his  greatest  poems  in  the  Poems  and  Ballads,  "The  Tri- 
umph of  Time,"  was  inspired  by  the  one  love  disap- 
pointment of  his  life.  It  was  written  in  1862  when  he 
was  twenty-five  years  old  and  "represented  with  the 
exactest  fidelity,"  says  Gosse,  his  biographer,  "his  emo- 
tions which  passed  through  his  mind  when  his  anger 
had  died  down,  and  when  nothing  remained  but  the  in- 
finite pity  and  the  pain."  Swinburne  met  the  young  lady 
at  the  home  of  the  friends  of  Ruskin  and  Bume- Jones, 
Dr.  John  Simon  and  his  wife.  She  was  a  kinswoman 
of  theirs.  She  gave  the  poet  roses  and  sang  for  him. 
She  laughed  in  his  face  when  he  proposed.  He  was  hurt 
grievously  and  went  up  to  the  sea  in  Northumberland 
and  composed  the  poem.  The  poet  told  Gosse  the  story 
in  1876. 

The  poem  is  a  cry  of  a  wounded  heart;  one  of  the  most 
powerful  in  all  literature.  The  poet  recounts  all  his  emo- 
tions and  foresees  that  this  affair  will  influence  his  life. 
Many  lines  in  it  are  familiar  to  Swinburne  lovers,  such  as 
"I  shall  never  be  friend  again  with  roses,"  "I  shall  hate 
sweet  music  my  whole  life  long."  It  is  one  of  Swin- 
burne's masterpieces  and  Rupert  Brooke  considered  it  the 
masterpiece  of  the  poet. 

One  may  now  see  that  the  terrible  declamation  against 
love,  one  of  the  lengthiest  and  best  choruses  in  his  play 
Atlanta  in  Calydon,  rings  with  a  personal  note.  The 
lines  beginning  "For  an  evil  blossom  was  born"  con- 
stitute one  of  the  most  bitter  outcries  against  love  in 
literature.  Unconsciously,  memories  of  his  lost  love 
were  at  work  and  the  chorus  must  have  been  written 


AUTHOR  UNCONSCIOUSLY  IN  HIS  WORK       75 

about  the  same  time  as  "The  Triumph  of  Time."  The 
play  itself  was  published  in  1864.  Swinburne  is  the 
Chorus  and  thus  chants  his  own  feelings  in  the  Greek 
legend  he  tells. 

Swinburne  may  have  had  other  love  affairs  though 
Gosse  tells  us  this  was  his  only  one.  I  find  memories 
of  the  unfortunate  episode  throughout  the  entire  first 
volume  of  Poems  and  Ballads,  and  note  recurrences  to 
the  theme  in  later  volumes.  In  one  of  his  best  known 
poems,  "The  Forsaken  Garden,"  written  in  1876,  he 
dwells  on  the  death  of  love.  The  idea  of  love  having  an 
end  is  repeated  with  much  persistency  throughout  many 
of  his  poems;  he  so  harps  on  the  same  note,  that  the 
suspicions  of  critics  should  have  been  roused  before  we 
learned  about  the  romance  of  his  life.  No  doubt  the 
reason  he  was  attracted  to  the  love  tragedy  of  Tristram 
of  Lyonesse,  published  in  1882,  was  because  of  his  own 
tragic  experience;  and  in  the  splendid  prelude  (written, 
Gosse  tells  us,  in  1871)  we  see  the  effects  of  his  love  af- 
fair. 

We  have  evidence  of  Swinburne's  grief  in  two  of  the 
greatest  poems  of  the  Poems  and  Ballads,  where  it  was 
least  suspected,  in  "Anactoria"  and  "Dolores,"  poems 
whose  morality  he  had  to  defend.  He  pours  some  light 
on  the  subject  in  his  Notes  on  Poems  and  Reviews,  pub- 
lished as  a  reply  to  his  critics  after  the  issue  of  his 
Poems  and  Ballads  in  1865.  Of  "Anactoria"  he  said: 
"In  this  poem  I  have  simply  expressed,  or  tried  to  ex- 
press, that  violence  of  affection  between  one  and  another 
which  hardens  into  rage  and  deepens  into  despair.  .  .  . 
I  have  tried  to  cast  my  spirit  into  the  mould  of  hers 
(Sappho),  to  express  and  represent  not  the  poem  but 
the  poet.  ...  As  to  the  'blasphemies'  against  God  or 
gods  of  which  here  and  elsewhere  I  stand  accused — they 


76      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

are  to  be  taken  as  the  first  outcome  or  outburst  of  foiled 
and  fruitless  passion  recoiling  on  itself." 

In  other  words  he  was  singing  his  own  grief  through 
Sappho.  The  rage  and  despair  were  Swinburne's  own 
and  the  "blasphemies"  were  his  own  reaction  to  frus- 
trated love. 

On  "Dolores,"  the  poet  says:  "I  have  striven  here  to 
express  that  transient  state  of  spirit  through  which  a 
man  may  be  supposed  to  pass,  foiled  in  love  and  weary 
of  loving,  but  not  yet  in  sight  of  rest;  seeking  rest  in 
those  violent  delights  which  have  violent  ends  in  free 
and  frank  sensualities  which  at  last  profess  to  be  no 
more  than  they  are." 

No  doubt  the  poet  gave  himself  up  to  light  loves  as 
a  result  of  his  disappointment.  But  the  point  here  to 
be  remembered  is  that  the  poem  is  by  his  own  confes- 
sion a  result  of  a  state  of  spirit  through  which  a  "man 
foiled  in  love"  (the  poet  himself)  may  be  said  to  pass 
and  through  which  Swinburne  did  pass. 

Let  us  examine  some  of  his  lyrics,  chiefly  those  in 
his  first  volume  where  we  can  see  the  result  of  the  love 
affair. 

In  "Laus  Veneris"  he  breaks  off  from  his  story  to 
say: 

"Ah  love,  there  is  no  better  life  than  this, 
To  have  known  love  how  bitter  a  thing  it  is, 
And  afterwards  be  cast  out  of  God's  sight." 

He  spoke  here  from  personal  memories. 

After  he  tells  the  story  of  "Les  Noyades,"  of  the  youth 
who  was  bound  to  a  woman  who  did  not  love  him  and 
thrown  into  the  river  Loire,  the  poet  ends  abruptly, 
and  addresses  his  own  love,  regretting  that  this  could 
not  have  happened  to  him.    He  re-echoes  the  sentiment 


AUTHOR  UNCONSCIOUSLY  IN  HIS  WORK       77 

in  "The  Triumph  of  Time"  where  he  wishes  he  were 
dead  with  his  love.  Yet  no  critic  has  ventured  to  see 
how  Swinburne  was  drawn  to  this  tale  by  his  uncon- 
scious, by  the  fact  that  he  had  lost  his  love;  and  no 
critic  dreamed  of  claiming  that  the  following  conclud- 
ing lines  were  personal  and  addressed  to  the  kinswoman 
of  the  Simons: 

"O  sweet  one  love,  O  my  life's  delight, 
Dear,  though   the  days   have   divided   us, 
Lost   beyond   hope,    taken    far   out   of    sight, 
Not  twice  in  the  world  shall  the  Gods  do  this." 

His  address  to  the  spirit  of  Paganism,  the  "Hymn  of 
Proserpine,"  which  should  not  necessarily  bring  up 
thoughts  of  his  love  tragedy,  nevertheless  begins,  "I 
have  lived  long  enough,  have  seen  one  thing,  that 
love  hath  an  end,"  and  later  on  he  complains  that 
laurel  is  green  for  a  season,  and  love  is  sweet  for  a  day, 
but  love  grows  bitter  with  treason  and  laurel  outlives 
not  May.  I  fear  that  the  poet  deserves  more  sympathy 
than  he  has  hitherto  been  accorded.  He  had  accused 
his  love  of  having  encouraged  him,  hence  he  knew  what 
he  meant  when  he  sang  those  sad  words  "love  grows 
bitter  with  treason." 

Two  other  pathetic  poems  are  "A  Leave  Taking" 
where  he  constantly  reiterates  "she  would  not  love"  and 
he  turns  for  consolation  to  his  songs;  and  "Satia  de 
Sanguine"  where  he  says,  "in  the  heart  is  the  prey  for 
gods,  who  crucify  hearts,  not  hands." 

In  "Rondel"  he  begins: 

"These  many  years  since  we  began  to  be 
What  have  the  gods  done  with  us?  what  with  me. 
What  with  my  love?     They  have  shown  me  fates  and  fears, 
Ilarbh  springs  and  fountains  bitterer  than  the  sea." 


78      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

In  the  "Garden  of  Proserpine,"  he  sings, 

"And  love  grown  faint  and  fretful, 
Sighs  and  with  eyes  forgetful 
Weeps  that  no  loves  endure." 

This  poem  shows  his  longing  for  rest  after  his  sad 
experience;  he  is  tired  of  everything  but  sleep. 
In  "Hesperia"  he  again  refers  to  his  troubles: 

"As   the    cross   that   a  wild    nun   clasps   till   the    edge   of    it 

bruises   her  bosom, 
So  love  wounds  as  we  grasp  it  and  blackens  and  burns  as  a 

flame ; 
I  have  loved  much  in  my  life;  when  the  live  bud  bursts  with 

the  blossom 
Bitter  as  ashes  or  tears  is  the  fruit,  and  the  wine  thereof 

shame." 

Even  in  "The  Leper"  he  gives  us  an  inkling  of  his 
great  love  by  describing  the  devotion  of  the  lover  for 
the  smitten  lady.  "She  rnight  have  loved  me  a  little 
too,  had  I  been  humbler  for  her  sake." 

All  these  poems  appeared  in  his  first  volume  and 
were  written  within  at  least  two  years  after  his  sorrow. 
He  can  scarcely  write  a  poem  or  chant  about  a  woman 
or  retell  an  old  myth  or  legend,  or  venture  a  bit  of 
philosophy  but  he  unconsciously  introduces  his  aching 
heart.  The  burden  is  always  that  love  has  an  end  or 
lives  but  a  day. 

There  are  other  poems  in  the  first  volume  where  the 
personal  note  is  present  and  yet  very  little  attention  has 
been  called  to  this. 

The  poem  "Felise,"  with  its  quotation  from  Villon, 
"Where  are  the  Snows  of  Yesterday,"  is  I  believe  a  per- 
sonal poem,  based  on  an  actual  or  desired  change  be- 
tween him  and  his  lost  sweetheart,  that  is,  if  this  poem 
refers  to  her.     Some  day  new  data  may  appear  to  tell 


AUTHOR  UNCONSCIOUSLY  IN  HIS  WORK      79 

us  whether  the  facts  of  the  poem  had  any  basis  in  real- 
ity. It  seems  that  a  year  after  the  poet's  love  was  re- 
jected by  the  girl,  she  wished  to  win  his  love  back  and 
that  he  now  scorned  her.  The  poem  was  written,  Gosse 
conjectures,  in  1864,  but  1863  is  most  likely  the  date 
from  the  internal  evidence,  as  she  rejected  him  in  1862. 
Swinburne  refers  to  the  change  a  year  had  brought: 

"I  had  died  for  this  last  year,  to  know 
You  loved  me.     Who  shall  turn  on  fate? 
I  care  not  if  love  come  or  go 
Now,  though  your  love  seek  mine  for  mate. 
It  is  too  late." 

He  exults  cruelly;  in  the  new  situation  he  is  re- 
venged. 

"Love    wears    thin, 
And  they  laugh  well  who  laugh  the  last." 

He  concludes: 

"But  sweet,   for  me  no  more  with  you! 
Not  while  I  live,  not  though  I  die. 
Good  night,  good  bye." 

If  she  ever  sought  a  return  to  the  poet's  affections,  he 
refused  to  receive  her.  He  had  hoped  she  might  seek 
to  return;  read  the  following  lines  from  "The  Triumph 
of  Time,"  where  he  takes  the  same  stand  that  he  does 
in  this  poem. 

"Will  it  not  one  day  in  heaven  repent  you? 
Will  they  solace  you  wholly  the  days  that  were? 
Will  you  lift  up  your  eyes  between  sadness  and  bliss, 
Meet  me  and  see  where  the  great  lane  is, 
And  tremble  and  turn  and  be  changed?    Content  you. 
The  gait  is  strait.     I  shall  not  be  there." 

No,  never  would  he  take  her  back.  Whether  the  in- 
cident of  her  asking  to  be  restored  to  his  affections  hap- 
pened or  not  is  unimportant,  relatively.    Sappho  prayed 


8o      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

to  Aphrodite  to  reverse  the  situation  of  her  love  and 
make  the  rejecting  lover  come  to  her  suppliant;  a  situa- 
tion that  every  suffering  lover  wants,  and  as  we  know, 
very  often  happens. 

One  of  the  finest  poems  inspired  by  his  love,  "his 
sleek  black  pantheress,"  is  the  poem  called  "At  a  Month's 
End,"  published  in  1878  in  the  second  series  of  Poems 
and  Ballads.  He  recalls  the  old  days  and  his  grief 
is  not  now  so  maddening.    He  sighs: 

"Should  Love  disown  or  disesteem  you 
For  loving  one  man  more  or  less? 
You  could  not  tame  your  light  white  sea-mew, 
Nor  I  my  sleek  black  pantheress. 

"For  a  new  soul  let  whoso  please  pray, 
We  are  what  life  made  us  and  shall  be. 
For  you  the  jungle  and  me  the  sea-spray 
And  south  for  you  and  north  for  me." 

The  late  Edward  Thomas,  killed  in  the  war,  was  cer- 
tainly in  error  when  he  concluded  that  Swinburne  did 
not  directly  express  personal  emotion  and  that  few  of 
the  pieces  could  have  been  addressed  to  one  woman  and 
that  he  never  expressed  a  single  hearted  devotion  to  one 
woman  except  in  "A  Leave  Taking."  We  need  not  in- 
sist that  one  woman  was  always  in  his  mind,  but  one 
woman  inspired  most  of  his  love  passages.  New  in- 
formation may  show  that  other  women  inspired  some  of 
his  love  verse.* 

Another  phase  in  studying  the  poet  that  has  interested 
readers  is  whether  he  actually  figured  in  the  light  and 
lewd  loves  he  sang.  This  is  rather  dangerous  ground, 
and  one  cannot  delve  with  certainty  here.     Nor  is  this 

*  Among  recently  published  posthumous  poems  of  Swin- 
burne is  one  called  "Southward,"  written  no  doubt  with  his 
love  still  fresh  in  mind. 


AUTHOR  UNCONSCIOUSLY  IN  HIS  WORK       8i 

matter  so  important  as  the  question  of  the  connection 
between  a  grand  passion  and  the  poems.  The  poet  says 
in  his  notes  in  reply  to  critics  that  "Dolores"  and 
"Faustine"  are  merely  fanciful.  Gosse  has  been  cen- 
sured for  not  having  written  an  honest  biography  and 
for  having  passed  over  certain  episodes  in  the  poet's 
life.  It  had  often  been  rumoured  that  the  poet  did  lead, 
occasionally,  a  dissipated  life.  In  the  late  seventies  he 
was  rescued  by  his  friend  Watts-Dunton  from  the  ef- 
fects of  presumable  long  dissipation.  After  that  time 
the  poet's  life  was  normal  and  the  publication  of  the 
early  poems  of  passion  became  a  source  of  regret  to  him. 
He  never  again  returned  to  that  strain  and  incidentally 
rarely  wrote  work  that  was  equal  to  his  first  period. 
It  may  then  be  true  that  some  light  loves  and  immoral 
women  inspired  poems  like  "Anima  Anceps,"  "A  Match," 
"Before  Parting,"  "Rococo,"  "Stage  Love,"  "Interlude," 
"Before  Dawn,"  "Faustine,"  "Dolores,"  "Fragoleeta," 
"Aholibah,"  etc. 

Swinburne  then,  who  of  all  lyric  poets  was  the  one 
deemed  least  to  have  drawn  on  his  personal  life  for 
material,  has  done  so  in  great  measure. 

His  "Thalassius"  gives  us  his  spiritual  autobiography. 
At  the  age  of  fifty-five  he  recurred  to  his  childhood 
scenes  and  gave  us  memories  of  them  in  his  drama  The 
Sister  (1892)  where  he  drew  himself  in  Clavering.  His 
The  Tale  of  Balen,  published  a  few  years  later,  is  also 
personal. 

In  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  poet  elaborated  and  gave 
us  such  rich  verse,  he  wrote  from  the  unconscious.  The 
first  stanzas  of  "A  Vision  of  Spring  in  Winter"  were 
composed  in  sleep.  He  awoke  at  night  and  penned  the 
verses  he  had  composed.     His  "A  Ballade  of  Dream- 


82      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

land"  was  written  in  the  morning  without  a  halt.  Swin- 
burne worked  from  impulse. 

Swinburne's  affinity  to  Shelley  calls  for  special 
comment.  He  was  attracted  to  him,  because  Shelley 
too,  like  Swinburne,  hated  monarchy  and  the  church,  be- 
cause he  had  a  mastery  over  melody  in  verse,  because 
he  was  persecuted.  He  wrote  to  his  youngest  sister 
(Leith:  Swinburne,  Page  221):  "I  must  say  it  is  too 
funny — not  to  say  uncanny — how  much  there  is  in  com- 
mon between  us  two;  born  in  exactly  the  same  class, 
cast  out  of  Oxford — the  only  difference  being  that  I 
was  not  formally  but  informally  expelled — and  holding 
and  preaching  the  same  general  views  in  the  poems 
which  made  us  famous."  This  is  a  good  illustration 
of  the  process  of  projection  in  literature.  Swinburne 
was  attracted  to  Shelley  because  he  was  most  like  him. 

The  influence  of  his  mother,  Jane  Swinburne,  was  a 
determining  factor  in  his  life.  She  guided  his  reading 
and  took  care  of  him  and  he  was  mentally  a  good  deal 
like  her.  He  was  very  much  attached  to  her  and  no 
doubt  she  unconsciously  is  present  in  much  of  his  work. 
She  died  in  1896  when  eighty-seven  years  old  and  her 
death  left  him  a  changed  man  and  was  the  tragedy  of 
his  later  life.  When  she  came  to  live  with  him  before 
her  death  he  wrote  a  poem  of  welcome  to  her,  "The 
High  Oaks,"  and  when  she  died  he  wrote  "Barking 
Hall." 


CHAPTER  VI 

UNCONSCIOUS    CONSOLATORY    MECHANISMS    IN 
AUTHORSHIP 


There  is  a  large  body  of  popular  literature  that  may 
be  called  the  literature  of  self-deception.  The  author 
makes  statements  that  are  false,  but  which  he  wants 
to  be  true.  He  is  aware,  too,  that  most  people  like  these 
sentiments,  and  he  gives  a  forceful  expression  to  them 
so  that  they  have  a  semblance  of  truth.  Dr.  Johnson 
once  said  that  all  the  arguments  set  forth  to  prove  the 
advantages  of  poverty  are  good  proof  that  this  is  not 
so;  you  find  no  one  trying  to  prove  to  you  the  benefits 
of  riches. 

The  literature  of  self-deception,  which  is  nearly  al- 
ways optimistic  and  consolatory,  derives  its  value  as  a 
defence  mechanism.  It  is  based  on  a  lie  but  is  effica- 
cious nevertheless.  Of  this  species  Henley's  famous 
poem  ending  with  lines  "I  am  Master  of  my  fate,  I  am 
Captain  of  my  soul"  is  a  good  example.  Of  course  no 
one  is  master  of  his  fate.  To  this  class  belongs  much 
of  the  consolatory  advice  found  in  the  stoical  precepts 
of  Epictetus,  Marcus  Aurelius  and  Seneca.  Most  reli- 
gious poems  and  works  like  The  Imitation  of  Christ  may 
be  included  here. 

Many  writers  whose  lives  have  been  sad,  have  written 
83 


84      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

works  that  buoyed  them  up.  They  have  affected  to 
learn  much  from  their  calamities,  although  they  unques- 
tionably would  have  preferred  not  to  have  been  victims 
of  these  misfortunes.  They  have  pretended  to  exult 
over  the  failures  of  their  ambitions  when  at  heart  they 
would  have  wished  a  more  successful  termination  to 
them.  Naturally  literature  of  this  kind  is  popular,  al- 
though any  vigorous  intellect  can  see  through  the  fal- 
laciousness of  the  reasoning  in  a  poem  like  "The  Psalm 
of  Life"  or  in  the  writings  of  the  syndicate  authors  in 
our  newspapers. 

All  the  literary  works  wherein  the  precious  and  valued 
things  in  life  are  decried,  wherein  asceticism,  death  and 
celibacy  are  vaunted,  are  usually  unconsciously  insin- 
cere. The  writer  cannot  have  certain  things  and  he 
bolsters  himself  up  by  pretending  he  is  better  off  with- 
out them. 

In  examining  a  literary  work  we  should  always  find 
out  what  the  author's  real  thoughts  must  be,  and  not 
assume  that  they  are  what  he  claims  them  to  be. 

Eulogies  of  pain  and  the  praise  of  the  advantages  of 
misfortune  are  forced,  and  though  the  literature  abound- 
ing in  such  sentiments  may  aid  some,  it  will  only  irri- 
tate those  who  think. 

It  would  be  interesting  to  collect  passages  from  the 
works  of  writers  who  give  us  such  ideas  and  inquire 
what  motive  prompted  them.  It  is  not  very  difficult  to 
unravel  the  unconscious  in  these  cases,  especially  if  we 
know  something  of  the  writer's  life. 

Take  the  following  lines  from  "Rabbi  Ben  Ezra"  by 
Browning: 

"What  I  aspired  to  be, 
And  was  not,  comforts  me." 


UNCONSCIOUS  MECHANISMS  85 

No  doubt  these  lines,  put  in  the  mouth  of  the  Rab- 
bi, were  a  consolation  that  Browning  administered 
to  himself  in  his  days  of  obscurity.  It  could  not  be 
possible  that  he  really  meant  it.  He  wanted  his 
work  to  be  read  and  he  wanted  to  have  the  name  of 
poet.  While  it  is  not  to  the  credit  of  a  poet  to  seek 
popular  applause  by  trying  to  do  commonplace  work, 
still  a  poet  of  value  is  anxious  to  be  recognised  as  such 
by  some  people.  He  is  not  comforted  that  he  does  not 
attain  this  end;  on  the  contrary,  he  is  disappointed. 
And  while  it  is  always  best  to  do  one's  utmost  and  to 
be  resigned  if  one  fails,  it  does  not  follow  that  the  man 
should  be  satisfied  with  his  mishap.  The  lines  of  Brown- 
ing are  a  confession  of  regret  for  failure. 

Then  the  various  passages  in  the  same  poem  seeking 
to  show  the  advantages  of  age  over  youth  merely  tell  us 
that  after  all  the  poet  was  really  bemoaning  his  lost 
youth.  Love  and  recognition  came  to  him  late  in  life, 
and  as  his  youth  was  embroiled  with  some  unsatisfac- 
tory love  affairs  and  as  he  was  not  recognised  as  a  great 
poet,  we  cannot  say  that  Browning  had  an  altogether 
happy  youth.  He  would  have  preferred  to  become 
young  again  but  to  spend  his  youth  more  happily  than 
he  had  done.  He  also  no  doubt  had  unconsciously  be- 
fore him  the  praises  sung  by  poets  of  youth,  and  recalled 
Coleridge's  beautiful  plaint  for  his  own  departed  youth, 
in  the  poem  "Youth  and  Age."  Browning  really  agreed 
with  the  sentiments  of  that  poem,  but  after  all  what  was 
the  use  of  regrets?  One  might  as  well  pretend  that  age 
was  the  better  period  of  life,  and  one  would  then  pos- 
sibly be  able  to  enjoy  it.  He  wrote  then,  when  past 
fifty,  to  counteract  his  real  feelings,  the  lines: 


86      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

"Grow  old  along  with  me! 
The  best  is  yet  to  be, 
The  last  of  life  for  which  the  first  was  made." 

Much  of  Browning's  optimism  was  forced. 

The  most  famous  example  of  consolation  for  the  mis- 
eries of  old  age  is  Cicero's  discourse  On  Old  Age  ad- 
dressed to  Atticus  when  they  were  both  about  sixty- 
three  years  old.  Cicero  puts  his  own  arguments  about 
the  advantages  of  old  age  into  the  mouth  of  Cato  who 
is  eighty-four  years  old.  Cato  tries  to  prove  beneficial 
the  four  assumed  disadvantages  of  old  age;  these  are 
that  it  takes  us  away  from  the  transactions  of  affairs, 
enfeebles  our  body,  deprives  us  of  most  pleasures  and 
is  not  very  far  from  death. 

Cicero  really  tried  to  console  himself  for  the  loss  of 
his  youth.  Most  assuredly  he  would  rather  have  been 
young.  The  objections  that  he  finds  against  old  age 
are  not  satisfactorily  removed  by  him  and  he  does  not 
state  them  all.  Even  though  he  does  show  old  age  has 
its  pleasures,  we  read  between  the  lines  that  he  is  aware 
that  his  body  is  subject  to  ailments,  that  he  is  shut  off 
from  certain  pleasures,  that  he  has  not  the  energy  or 
health  or  zest  of  life  he  had  in  youth  and  that  he  dreads 
death;  we  perceive  all  his  arguments  are  got  up  to  rid 
himself  of  these  painful  thoughts.  People  as  a  rule 
do  not  write  on  the  disadvantages  of  youth;  these  are 
taken  for  granted.  Rich  and  successful  men  who  are 
old  would  generally  be  young  again  and  give  up  some 
of  the  advantages  of  old  age.  Not  that  many  people 
have  not  been  happier  in  age  than  in  youth,  not  that 
age  is  not  free  from  those  violent  passions  to  which 
youth  is  subject,  but  youth  still  is  preferable  to  old 
age  and  all  the  arguments  in  favour  of  it  will  not  make 
a  man  want  it  to  be  reached  more  quickly. 


UNCONSCIOUS  MECHANISMS  87 

Carlyle  was  the  author  of  many  statements  meant  to 
salve  his  own  wounds.  One  of  his  famous  hobbies  was 
to  attack  people  who  seek  happiness,  no  doubt  because 
that  is  the  very  thing  he  himself  sought  his  whole  life 
long.  He  told  them  to  seek  blessedness.  Let  us  ex- 
amine the  following  passage  from  one  of  the  most 
famous  chapters  of  Sartor  Resartus,  entitled  "The  Ever- 
lasting Yea." 

"I  asked  myself:  What  is  this  that,  ever  since  earli- 
est years,  thou  hast  been  fretting  and  fuming,  and  la- 
menting and  self-torturing,  on  account  of?  Say  it  in 
a  word;  is  it  not  because  thou  art  not  happy?  .... 
Foolish  soul!  What  act  of  legislature  was  there  that 
thou  shouldst  be  happy?  .  .  .  Close  thy  Byron;  open 
thy  Goethe.  .  .  .  there  is  in  man  a  Higher  than  love 
of  Happiness:  he  can  do  without  happiness,  and  in- 
stead thereof  find  Blessedness." 

We  can  discern  under  all  this  Carlyle's  despair  be- 
cause he  is  not  happy.  Teufelsdrock,  who  is  Carlyle's 
picture  of  himself,  had  a  sweetheart  who  was  stolen  by 
a  friend.  One  may  be  sure  that  Teufelsdrock  would 
have  given  up  his  ideal  of  blessedness  if  this  misfor- 
tune could  have  been  prevented.  No  doubt,  like  Car- 
lyle, he  had  dyspepsia,  was  poverty-stricken  and  had 
a  hard  path  to  travel  to  success.  Of  course  he  would 
have  wished  to  have  had  a  good  stomach,  to  be  free 
from  money  troubles,  and  to  be  recognised.  All  these 
fortunate  circumstances  were  not  his.  He  had  to  say 
to  himself,  "Away  with  them.  I  am  better  off  without 
them."  But  it  is  certain  he  never  could  have  really 
felt  this  way.  We  learn  from  Carlyle's  recently  pub- 
lished letters,  written  to  his  future  v/ife  in  his  court- 
ing days,  that  he  was  unhappy  for  personal  reasons;  be- 
cause she  coquetted  with  him  or  jilted  him,  because  he 


B8      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

was  unsuccessful,  because  he  was  poor,  etc.  He  whined 
only  too  much  though  no  doubt  he  had  reason  therefor. 
He  is  full  of  the  Byronism  which  he  affected  to  despise. 

It  is  likely  that  Browning  and  Carlyle,  who  remain, 
nevertheless,  among  the  greatest  English  writers,  may 
have  thought  at  the  time  of  writing  that  they  believed 
what  they  said.  But  psychoanalysis  teaches  us  that  we 
do  not  really  know  our  own  minds.  We  may  think 
we  are  honest  when  we  really  are  deceiving  ourselves. 

A  writer  may  seek  an  effect  which  is  attained  by  laud- 
ing a  moral  sentiment.  Did  not  Shelley  profess  to  be- 
lieve in  immortality  of  the  soul,  in  his  elegy  on  Keats, 
Adonais,  while  we  know  from  a  prose  essay  of  his  that  he 
did  not  believe  in  immortahty? 

We  should  try  to  learn  the  whole  truth  from  the  frac- 
tional part  of  it  or  unconscious  lie  that  authors  give  us. 
We  will  find  a  personal  background  for  all  their  the- 
ories, a  past  humiliation  or  a  present  need,  which  will 
explain  the  origin  of  the  ideas  professed. 

When  we  read  in  his  Autobiography  that  Spencer 
ascribes  his  nervous  breakdown  to  hard  work,  if  we  are 
Freudians  we  figure  that  Spencer  has  not  told  us 
the  truth.  We  know  that  most  cases  of  breakdown 
have  had  a  previous  history,  usually  in  some  love  or 
sex  repression.  We  are  aware  that  Spencer  was  a  bach- 
elor who  never  had  his  craving  for  love  satisfied,  and 
probably  led  a  celibate  life.  This  led  to  his  nervous 
troubles.  This  is  merely  one  instance  where  by  the  aid 
of  psychoanalysis  we  can  read  more  than  the  author 
reveals. 

There  are  many  instances  where  critics  who  had  never 
heard  of  psychoanalysis  still  applied  its  principles.  In 
his  essay  on  Thoreau,  Stevenson  dilates  on  Thoreau's 
cynical  views  on  friendship.     When  Stevenson  inserted 


UNCONSCIOUS  MECHANISMS  89 

the  essay  in  his  Familiar  Portraits  he  wrote  a  little  in- 
troductory note,  in  which  he  shows  he  penetrated  the 
secret  of  Thoreau's  views.  Thoreau  was  simply  seeking 
to  find  a  salve  for  his  own  lack  of  social  graces.  His 
strange  views  and  personality  made  him  almost  an  im- 
possible friend. 

n 

Even  a  great  writer  like  Goethe  deceived  himself,  as  one 
can  see  by  a  famous  passage  in  his  autobiography  as  to 
why  Spinoza  appealed  to  him.  In  the  fourteenth  book  he 
says  that  his  whole  mind  was  filled  with  the  statement 
from  the  Ethics,  that  he  who  loves  God  does  not  desire 
God  to  love  him  in  return.  Goethe  desired  to  be  dis- 
interested in  love  and  friendship,  and  he  says  that  his 
subsequent  daring  question,  "If  I  love  thee,  what  is 
that  to  thee?"  was  spoken  straight  from  his  heart. 

Great  as  Goethe's  intellect  was,  he  could  not  perceive 
that  his  partiality  for  this  passage  from  Spinoza  was  due 
to  the  consolation  he  found  in  it  for  unreciprocated  love. 
This  particular  sentiment  from  the  profound  work  of 
that  philosopher  is  really  one  of  the  least  valuable  parts 
of  the  work.  It  was  probably  inspired  unconsciously 
by  the  philosopher's  rejection  at  the  hands  of  Miss  Van 
den  Ende,  whom  he  meant  to  marry.  The  Ethics  was 
finished  when  the  author  was  about  thirty-three.  Spi- 
noza, who  led  the  life  of  a  celibate,  sublimated  his  re- 
pressed love  into  philosophic  speculation.  When  he 
wrote  the  passage  in  question  he  was  consoling  himself 
for  loving  a  girl  who  did  not  care  for  him.  The  mech- 
anism was:  "I  am  not  such  a  fool  after  all,  because  I 
love  a  girl  who  does  not  love  me;  why  should  I  even 
want  her  to  do  so;  don't  we  love  God,  and  yet  don't 
want  Him  to  love  us  in  return?"    Goethe,  having  gone 


Qo      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

through  the  harassing  experience  that  led  to  the  writing 
of  Werther,  repeated  the  mental  processes  that  Spinoza 
must  have  gone  through  in  creating  the  sentiment  about 
our  not  desiring  God  to  love  us  in  return. 

Goethe  imagined  that  love  could  be  disinterested,  and 
this  is  really  not  so.  The  lover  seeks  a  return  of  his 
love,  for  that  is  just  what  love  means.  Those  novels 
where  sacrificing  lovers  turn  over  the  women  they  love 
to  rivals,  as  in  George  Sand's  Jacques  and  Dostoievsky's 
Injured  and  Insulted,  do  not  show  disinterested  love, 
but  merely  obedience  to  an  abstract  idea  with  which  the 
whole  individual's  psychic  and  physical  constitution  is 
not  in  harmony  at  all.  Goethe  tried  to  be  different  from 
what  he  really  was.  The  question,  "What  is  that  to 
thee  if  I  love  thee?"  with  its  corollary  that  the  love 
need  not  be  returned,  did  not  come,  as  Goethe  thought, 
straight  from  his  heart.  His  interest  in  Spinoza's  senti- 
ment, just  as  the  creation  of  it  by  Spinoza,  was  a  self 
curative  process  for  grief  because  of  disprised  love.  All 
psychoneuroses  are  unsuccessful  efforts  to  purge  one's 
self  of  repressed  feelings. 

Now  let  us  investigate  the  sentiment  itself,  and  we 
will  see  under  analysis  it  has  no  value  intellectually. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  is  no  warrant  for  Spinoza's 
assumption  that  man  does  not  desire  that  God  love  him 
in  return.  All  religion  is  based  on  the  principle  that 
God  loves  us  and  cares  for  us  more  than  he  does  for 
other  animals,  or  more  than  he  does  for  other  tribes  or 
religious  sects.  Prayers  are  made  to  God  to  make  us 
happy  and  prosper  and  satisfy  our  wants.  This  is  tanta- 
mount to  saying  we  want  His  love.  If  God,  or  Natur:^, 
as  Spinoza  understood  Him,  was  only  a  malevolent  force 
and  gave  us  undiluted  pain,  we  would  not  love  Kim  or 
her.     Again,  man  does  not  love  God  or  Nature  in  the 


UNCONSCIOUS  MECHANISMS  91 

sense  that  he  loves  a  woman,  so  even  if  Spinoza  were 
right  that  man  does  not  desire  to  be  loved  by  God  or 
Nature  in  turn,  it  is  because  that  love  does  not  promise 
the  pleasure  derived  from  the  returned  love  of  the 
woman. 

The  truth  is  that  both  Spinoza  and  Goethe  would 
have  preferred  to  have  had  their  love  returned,  and 
had  such  been  the  case,  they  would  not  have  occupied 
themselves  with  this  fatuous  idea. 


m 

Then  there  is  the  reaction-impulse  and  the  infantile 
regression  in  writers.  Many  books  are  written  by  their 
authors  to  counteract  certain  impulses.  They  feel  that 
their  course  of  conduct  or  thought  was  reprehensible, 
and  they  try  to  make  amends  for  this.  They  become 
fanatical  converts;  they  show  a  regression  to  a  fixed 
period  in  their  own  lives,  and  return  to  the  religion  of 
their  parents.  Writers  who  in  spite  of  being  unable  to 
believe  in  religious  dogmas,  miracles,  ascetic  notions  of 
morality,  nevertheless  return  in  later  life  to  the  religions 
advocating  these,  belong  to  this  class.  The  leading  of  a 
wicked  life,  but  more  often  the  influence  of  childish 
memories  of  a  religious  household,  are  responsible  for 
such  conversions.  The  converts  feel  young  again;  pleas- 
ant recollections  of  the  mother  or  father  and  delicious 
memories  of  school  days  play  a  part  in  the  process. 
Many  free  thinkers  who  have  had  a  theological  training 
never  really  outgrow  this. 

Tolstoi's  conversion  was  due  to  the  wild  days  he 
spent  as  a  young  man.  He  was  a  proud  aristocrat,  and 
gave  play  to  all  his  instincts;  he  was  an  atheist  and 
pessimist,  he  was  a  gambler  and  a  rake.     He  shows  us 


92      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

his  evolution  in  his  various  novels  and  autobiograph- 
ical works.  He  finally  came  to  deify  ignorant  peasants 
and  advocated  extreme  non-resistance.  He  worshipped 
poverty,  practised  self-abnegation,  and  derogated  sex. 
But,  after  all,  his  latter  views  are  but  the  reactions  to 
the  life  he  led  in  youth,  and  a  regression  with  some 
changes  to  views  he  was  taught  in  childhood. 

The  same  is  true  of  Strindberg,  who  as  a  young  man 
was  an  atheist,  and  a  believer  in  free  love;  through  the 
sufferings  brought  about  by  his  three  marriages  and  his 
attacks  of  insanity,  he  ''turned."  He  looked  with  dis- 
approval upon  his  early  ideas,  attributed  much  of  his 
misery  to  his  entertaining  them;  hence  he  discarded 
them,  and  returned  to  the  religious  views  he  held  as  a 
child.  But  his  greatest  work  belonged  to  the  period 
when  he  held  liberal  ideas. 

Dostoievsky  was  really  always  a  devout  orthodox 
Christian,  even  in  his  early  revolutionary  days.  His 
great  suffering  in  Siberia  chastened  him,  and  made  him 
find  a  welcome  religion  in  the  religion  of  suffering,  a 
guide  in  Christ  who  suffered.  He  is  always  at  pains  in 
his  later  novels  to  prove  the  existence  of  a  personal 
God — a  fact  which  makes  one  suspect  that  he  had  his 
own  doubts,  and  that  he  tried  to  rid  himself  of  them 
by  his  writing.  Being  also  an  epileptic,  he  would,  partic- 
ularly in  these  attacks,  digress  to  infantile  fixations  and 
they  would  lead  him  to  worship  his  sublimated  "Father 
in  Heaven." 

There  are  many  who  naively  insist  that  these  men, 
when  they  went  back  to  the  belief  of  childhood  days, 
had  at  last  come  to  see  the  truth.  The  point  of  view 
taken  is  dependent  on  whether  a  man  considers  belief 
in  the  dogma  of  a  religion  a  fetter  or  an  asset. 

In  English  literature  we  have  as  examples  of  reac- 


UNCONSCIOUS  MECHANISMS  93 

tions,  both  in  religion  and  politics,  the  Lake  School  poets, 
Wordsworth,  Coleridge  and  Southey.  All  of  them  later 
turned  away  from  the  republican  and  pantheistic  ideas 
of  their  youth.  The  reason  Southey  fought  so  bitterly 
against  free  thinkers  like  Byron  and  Shelley,  is  that  in" 
youth  he,  like  them,  also  was  attached  to  the  ideas  of 
the  French  Revolution.  He  became  a  Tory  of  Tories, 
showed  disapproval  of  all  the  leading  thinkers  of  the 
time,  of  men  like  Hazlitt,  Lamb  and  Hunt.  Liberal 
ideas,  it  is  well  known,  have  no  greater  enemy  than  a 
renegade  liberal.  Southey  was  sufficiently  pilloried  by 
Byron  in  the  Vision  of  Last  Judgment,  and  the  psychol- 
ogy of  his  reaction  has  been  drawn  in  the  portrait  of 
him  by  Hazlitt  in  The  Spirit  of  the  Age,  while  the  gen- 
tle Lamb  has  administered  to  him  a  rebuke  in  the  im- 
mortal Letter  of  Elia  to  Robert  Southey. 

When  one  reads  the  theological  works  of  the  gifted 
Coleridge,  such  as  The  Aids  to  Reflection  and  some  of 
the  Table  Talk,  and  ponders  on  the  spectacle  of  this 
former  Spinozist  and  Unitarian,  speaking  in  defence  of 
dogmas  that  have  not  one  logical  argument  in  their 
favour,  one  is  amazed.  Poor  Coleridge!  What  a  wreck- 
age of  the  human  intellect  is  often  made  by  private 
misfortunes.  Here  was  the  greatest  literary  critic  and 
one  of  the  subtlest  poets  England  ever  had,  talking 
about  supernatural  miracles  as  though  they  were  not 
even  to  be  questioned.  "The  image  of  my  father,  my 
reverend,  kind,  learned,  simple-hearted  father,  is  a  re- 
ligion to  me,"  he  once  said,  thus  giving  us  the  key  to 
his  reaction.  The  elder  Coleridge  was  a  vicar,  and  died 
when  the  poet  was  nine  years  old.  The  poet  became 
religious  because  of  his  repressed  childish  affection  for 
a  religious  father  who  influenced  him. 

As  for  Wordsworth,  he  was  sufficiently  punished  for 


94      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

his  reaction,  in  that  in  later  life  he  was  never  able  to 
do  creditable  literary  work.  And  Shelley's  poem,  "To 
Wordsworth,"  and  the  lines  of  Browning  beginning, 
"Just  for  a  handful  of  silver  he  left  us,"  generally 
thought  to  refer  to  Wordsworth,  were  deserved  rebukes. 

The  reaction  impulse  plays  a  great  role  in  shaping 
the  destinies  of  literary  men.  It  sometimes  sweeps  an 
entire  age  and  gathers  all  before  it.  This  happened 
in  France  in  that  period  of  French  Literature  which 
Brandes  called  the  Catholic  Reaction,  when  Chateau- 
briand, De  Maistre,  Bonald,  and  others  were  influential. 
It  again  occurred  in  the  same  country  in  the  early  nine- 
ties when  leading  free  thinkers  like  Bourget  and  Huys- 
mans  went  from  the  extreme  radical  position  to  Catholi- 
cism. Only  great  writers  like  Zola  and  Anatole  France 
were  able  to  keep  their  heads  clear.  Now  most  of  these 
converts  really  were  always  at  heart  religious.  They 
never  emerged  from  the  associations  of  their  religion  even 
though  their  intellects  would  not  enable  them  to  believe 
some  of  its  dogmas.  Unconsciously  Bourget  and  Huys- 
man  were  always  Catholics  in  feeling. 

Hawthorne  wrote  a  story  in  which  he  imagines  some 
of  the  dead  English  poets  of  the  early  decades  of  the 
nineteenth  century  continuing  to  live,  and  living  a  life 
in  complete  reaction  to  their  youthful  lives.  He  pic- 
tures the  atheist  Shelley  as  becoming  a  Christian,  a  pre- 
diction that  might  have  come  true;  for  had  Shelley  died 
at  seventy  instead  of  thirty,  he  might  have  changed,  as 
there  was  some  similarity  between  his  ideas  of  "per- 
fectibility" and  those  of  Christianity.  This  is,  how- 
ever, a  mere  surmise,  as  one  of  the  last  letters  he  wrote 
contains  an  attack  on  Christianity. 

There  are  numerous  instances  of  the  reactionary  im- 
pulse in  literature.     Shakespeare,  who  was  of  plebeian 


UNCONSCIOUS  MECHANISMS  95 

origin,  often  attacked  the  common  people  in  his  plays. 
He  wrote  favourably  of  nobility,  and  had  little  sympathy 
with  democracy.  Nietzsche,  who  was  gentle  personally 
and  suffered  much  pain  in  his  life,  wrote  in  defence  of 
cruelty,  wished  to  do  away  with  pity,  sought  to  kill  the 
finer  emotions,  and  thought  invalids  should  be  left  to 
die  instead  of  being  allowed  to  be  cured.  He  was  cre- 
ating a  system  in  philosophy  whose  ruling  ideas  were 
the  very  opposite  to  those  which  governed  his  private 
life.  He  could  not  even  witness  another's  pain.  Pro- 
fessor Eucken  tells  a  story  illustrating  Nietzsche's  gen- 
tleness. When  that  philosopher  of  the  superman  orally 
examined  a  student  who  did  not  answer  correctly,  Nietz- 
sche would  prompt  him  and  answer  the  question  for 
him,  as  he  was  unable  to  witness  the  student's  discom- 
fiture. Bums  gave  us  some  poetic  outbursts  against  the 
crime  of  seduction,  probably  because  he  himself  was 
guilty  of  it.  Thackeray,  who  was  hopelessly  in  love  wuth 
a  married  woman,  Mrs.  Brookfield,  and  was  rejected  by 
her,  affected  to  be  very  cynical  at  disappointed  lovers  and 
ridiculed  them  in  his  Pendennis.  Cicero,  who  loved  glory, 
wrote  against  it. 

So  men  are  often  the  very  opposite  of  what  they  ap- 
pear in  their  books,  but  this  is  done  also  unconsciously, 
although  sometimes  the  effort  may  be  deliberate.  Con- 
verts are  fanatics.  Reformed  drunkards  are  the  most 
convinced  prohibitionists.  The  severest  moralists  and 
Puritans  are  often  former  rakes.  The  man  who  rails 
most  bitterly  against  a  vice  may  often  be  suspected  of 
struggling  against  temptation  with  it. 

Similarly,  the  fact  that  professors  in  exact  sciences 
and  devotees  to  a  philosophy  of  materialism,  often  be- 
come the  most  ardent  exponents  of  spiritualism,  may  be 
due  to  an  unconscious  reaction  on  their  part.    No  doubt 


96      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

the  desire  to  believe  that  the  dead  can  still  communi- 
cate with  us  is  the  real  basis  of  this  belief.  It  seems 
that  scientists  like  Lodge,  Crookes,  Barrett,  Wallace 
and  Lombroso,  who  have  done  so  much  to  spread  spir- 
itualism, should  be  the  last  persons  to  embrace  absurd 
beliefs  so  at  variance  with  the  principles  which  these 
men  profess  in  their  scientific  work. 


CHAPTER  VII 

PROJECTION,  VILLAIN  PORTRAYALS  AND  CYNICISM  AS 

WORK  OF  THE  UNCONSCIOUS 

I 

Renan  drew  himself  in  his  Lije  of  Jesus,  as  one  may 
see  by  comparing  it  with  his  Memoirs  of  My  Youth. 
He  projected  himself  upon  Jesus  and  wrote  a  life  of 
Renan  instead.  He  portrayed  in  the  volume  his  in- 
dividual traits  and  gave  his  own  characteristics  to  Jesus. 
His  picture  of  Jesus  is  not  a  true  one.  Unconsciously 
he  read  into  Jesus's  life  predominating  features  of  his 
own  personality,  and  also  of  his  sister  Henrietta's.  He 
emphasised  Christ's  love  of  flowers,  his  indifference  to 
the  external  world,  his  obsession  with  a  Utopian  ideal 
and  a  mission  in  life.  He  found  in  Jesus  a  love  for  the 
simple  and  common  folk,  and  a  partiality  towards 
women  and  children.  He  admired  Jesus's  exaltation  of 
beggars  and  sympathised  with  his  making  poverty  an 
object  of  love  and  desire.  He  saw  no  external  affecta- 
tion in  Christ,  who  was  bound  only  to  his  mission,  and 
who  was  a  revolutionist  besides.  Jesus  had  only  some  of 
the  qualities  Renan  attributed  to  him. 

"Never  did  any  one  more  loftily  avow  that  disdain 
of  the  'world'  which  is  the  essential  thing  of  great  things 
and  great  originality,"  said  Renan  of  his  Master.  Thus 
was  he  describing  himself  unconsciously  and  presenting: 
the  plan  of  life  which  he,  Renan,  had  followed. 

97 


98      THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

If  we  read  the  analysis  of  Jesus's  character  and  teach- 
ings in  the  last  three  chapters  of  the  Life  of  Jesus  and 
then  turn  to  Renan's  analysis  of  his  own  character  in 
his  autobiography,  we  shall  see  that  the  author  had  pro- 
jected himself  upon  Jesus,  as  it  were,  and  identified  him- 
self with  the  Master  he  worshipped.  He  finds  in  him- 
self, he  tells  us  in  his  autobiography,  love  of  poverty, 
indifference  to  the  world,  devotion  to  his  mission,  af- 
fection for  the  common  people,  esteem  for  simplicity, 
contempt  for  success  and  luxury,  fondness  for  poverty, 
dislike  for  the  world  of  action,  such  as  mercantile  life — 
in  short,  he  dwells  on  all  the  meek  and  lowly  traits  that 
he  has,  and  arrogates  to  himself  Jesus's  practices,  and 
attributes  to  his  master  idiosyncrasies  of  his  own.  In  an 
unguarded  moment  he  forgets  his  customary  modesty 
and  gives  us  the  clue  to  himself  in  these  words:  "I  am 
the  only  man  of  my  time  who  has  understood  the  char- 
acter of  Jesus  and  of  Francis  of  Assissi."  In  this  bit 
of  self-portraiture  is  the  whole  secret  of  his  Life  of 
Jesus.  Critics  were  attacking  him  for  drawing  a  false 
picture  of  the  founder  of  Christianity,  but  it  did  not 
dawn  on  them  why  the  portrait  was  distorted.  "Jesus 
has  in  reality  ever  been  my  master,"  says  Renan. 

How  strongly  Renan  identified  himself  with  and  pro- 
jected himself  upon  Jesus  may  be  seen  from  the  fact 
that  the  memoirs  written  at  the  age  of  sixty  are  in  the 
same  tone  as  the  Life  of  Jesus,  published  twenty  years 
earlier.  He  also  tells  us  in  the  memoirs  how  the  Life  of 
Jesiis  originated.  From  the  moment  he  abandoned  the 
church,  he  says,  with  the  resolution  that  he  should  still 
remain  faithful  to  Jesus,  the  Life  of  Jesus  was  mentally 
written. 

A  few  more  traits  that  may  be  mentioned,  which  he 
felt  he  had  in  common  with  Jesus,  were  his  aversion  to 


VILLAIN  PORTRAYALS  AND  CYNICISM       99 

incurring  intimate  friendships.  There  is  reason  to  be- 
lieve that  Jesus  did  have  friends,  but  Renan,  who  did 
not  cultivate  friendship  (though  he  had  a  good  friend 
in  Berthelot),  tried  to  persuade  himself  that  Jesus  was 
also  like  him  in  this  regard.  Again  Renan  deemed  him- 
self a  dreamer,  like  Jesus,  who  was,  however,  also  a  man 
of  action.  Renan  also  saw  his  own  effeminacy  and 
kindliness  in  Jesus,  who,  however,  vented  himself  of 
vigorous  utterances. 

Renan  also  fancied  he  found  in  Jesus  his  own  inher- 
ent hostility  to  Jewish  culture;  his  own  anti-Semitism. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  Jesus  owed  much  to  Jewish  culture, 
though  he  wanted  the  Jews  to  abandon  some  of  their  cus- 
toms and  to  revise  the  Mosaic  laws;  the  feeling  among 
Jews  was  that  Jesus,  instead  of  being  anti-Semitic, 
wished  to  be  their  leader  and  Messiah  and  King.  Renan 
reads  into  Jesus  his  own  anti-Semitism.  Those  who  are 
familiar  with  Renan's  writings  are  aware  of  the  many 
slurring  and  contemptuous  references  he  makes  to  the 
Jews.  In  fact,  one  of  the  paradoxes  of  his  life  is  that 
with  his  liberality  and  gentleness,  with  his  abandoning  of 
all  Christian  dogma,  he  entertains  a  bitter  feeling  to- 
wards the  people  who  gave  him  his  ideal  man,  the  people 
who  originated,  even  by  his  own  admission,  many  of 
Jesus's  maxims.  Renan  states  that  Jesus  profited  im- 
mensely by  the  teachings  of  Jesus,  son  of  Sirach,  of 
Rabbi  Hillel  and  of  the  synagogue.  Renan  unjustly 
made  Jesus  have  his  own  failing,  anti-Semitism. 

Strangely  enough,  Renan's  treatment  of  the  story  of 
Jesus  (outside  of  his  giving  Jesus  traits  of  his  own)  has 
been  very  largely  a  Jewish  one.  It  is  for  this  reason 
that  all  devout  Christians  were  offended.  Renan  treated 
Jesus  as  a  man  and  refused  to  credit  all  the  legends  con- 
nected with  him.    Renan  did  not  believe  that  Jesus  was 


100    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

born  without  a  human  father;  that  he  was  a  member  of 
a  Trinity;  that  he  could  perform  supernatural  miracles. 
In  short,  Renan  did  not  accept  Jesus  as  a  son  of  God, 
though  giving  him  traits  almost  divine  and  free  from 
human  frailties.  The  picture  of  Jesus  in  the  life  is  an 
idealised  Jewish  portrayal. 

Renan  serves  as  one  of  the  best  examples  of  a  free 
thinker  remaining  a  devotee  of  his  faith,  though  discard- 
ing all  the  tenets  on  which  it  rests.  His  early  religious 
training  had  a  permanent  influence  on  him,  and  he  was 
a  Christian  all  his  life,  even  though  he  differed  with 
the  church.  In  one  of  his  last  and  most  profound  es- 
says, the  "Examination  of  the  Human  Conscience,"  he 
gives  us  a  confession  of  his  faith.  Here  he  appears  as  a 
pantheist,  but  ventures  incredible  guesses  that  there 
may  be  a  supernatural.  His  church  mind  plays  havoc 
with  his  Spinozism,  and  we  see  his  early  infantile  in- 
fluences. Intellectually  at  times  he  stands  high,  higher 
it  may  be  said  without  irreverence  than  his  master 
Jesus,  since  he  had  at  his  command  a  knowledge  of 
science  and  philosophy  with  which  Jesus  was  unfamiliar. 
The  greatness  of  Renan  appears  in  his  Philosophical 
Dialogues,  in  his  Philosophical  Dramas,  in  his  Future  of 
Science,  in  the  Anti-Christ  and  other  essays  and  books. 
When  he  moralises  he  is  a  monk ;  when  he  speculates  on 
philosophic  and  scientific  subjects,  he  is  a  thinker. 
George  Brandes's  Renan  as  a  dramatist  is  an  excellent 
study.* 

Yet  literature  scarcely  offers  such  an  instance  of  a 
man  projecting  himself  upon  a  historical  character.  Such 
a  projection  is  similar  to  the  seeking,  in  an  unusual  de- 
gree, by  nervous  people  of  moral  shelter  and  consola- 
tion in  some  other  person.     The  reposing  of  Renan  on 

♦Jnternational  Quarterly. 


VILLAIN  PORTRAYALS  AND  CYNICISM     loi 

Jesus  gives  us  an  insight  into  the  birth  of  worship  of 
religious  founders.  Pfister,  a  disciple  of  Freud,  and 
himself  a  Christian  pastor,  says:  "In  the  divine  father- 
love,  he,  whose  longing  for  help,  for  ethical  salvation,  is 
not  satisfied  by  the  surrounding  reality,  finds  an  asylum. 
In  the  love  for  the  Saviour,  the  love-thirsting  soul  which 
finds  no  comprehension  and  no  return  love  in  his  fel- 
lowmen  is  refreshed." 

A  complete  psychoanalytic  study  of  Renan,  which 
this  essay  does  not  pretend  to  be,  would  make  a  fuller 
inquiry  into  his  relations  with  his  mother,  his  affection 
for  his  sister  and  her  influence  on  him  and  his  never- 
swerving  admiration  for  the  priests  who  were  his  early 
teachers.  He  has  left  tributes  to  all  of  them.  They 
ruled  his  life.  In  his  unconscious  a  fixation  upon  them 
was  buried.  His  love  for  them  kept  him  a  Chris- 
tian, when  intellectually  he  was  a  free  thinker.  They 
are  present  in  his  Life  of  Christ,  and  the  psychoan- 
alyst can  see  them  guiding  the  pen  of  Renan.  They  are 
always  with  him.  Had  they  not  loved  him  and  he  them 
so  intensely,  had  he  not  inherited  so  strongly  those 
meek,  effeminate  and  kindly  traits,  his  temperament 
might  have  been  as  unchristian  as  his  intellect. 

We  see  why  the  extreme  liberal  and  the  orthodox 
Christian  were  offended  by  his  Life  of  Christ,  and  why 
hundreds  of  pamphlets  and  articles  were  written  against 
it.  It  was  really  a  portrait  of  the  author,  and  the  un- 
conscious Christian  in  him  puzzled  the  radicals,  while 
his  conscious  intellect  seemed  like  blasphemy  to  the 
devout  followers  of  dogmas.  He  gave  his  own  idealised 
traits  to  his  hero,  and  the  freethinkers  complained  Renan 
made  Jesus  a  god  anyhow,  while  it  seemed  an  insult  to 
the  Christians  that  mere  moral  virtues  instead  of  divin- 


102    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

ity  should  be  thrust  upon  Jesus,  who  they  felt  did  not 
need  Renan's  compliments. 

n 

Authors  also  draw  on  the  unconscious  for  their  immoral 
characters.  In  Pere  Goriot  Balzac  drew  himself  in  Eugene 
Rastignac,  but  the  author  is  also  present  in  the  villain  of 
the  novel,  Vautrin  or  Jacques  Collins,  who  appears  like- 
wise in  Lost  Illusions  and  The  Splendors  and  Miseries  of 
Courtesans.  Vautrin,  it  will  be  recalled,  tries  to  persuade 
Eugene  to  marry  a  girl  whose  father  will  leave  her  a  mil- 
lion francs,  if  Eugene  consents  to  have  her  brother,  the 
more  likely  heir,  despatched  by  a  crony  of  Vautrin's. 
Thus  Eugene  would  be  enabled  to  become  rich  immediate- 
ly instead  of  being  compelled  to  struggle  for  years.  Vau- 
trin wants  a  reward  for  his  services.  Vautrin's  words 
are  really  the  voice  of  Balzac's  unconscious;  Eugene's 
inner  struggles  are  Balzac's  own;  and  though  the  young 
student  rejects  the  proposition  he  takes  up  Vautrin's 
line  of  reasoning  unconsciously,  even  though  to  drop  it. 
Vautrin's  Machiavellian  viewpoint  was  at  times  uncon- 
sciously entertained  by  Balzac  himself,  though  never 
practised.  We  know  Balzac  always  sought  for  schemes 
of  getting  rich  to  pay  his  debts,  and  was  always  occu- 
pied with  thoughts  of  his  aggrandisement  and  ambition. 
He  no  doubt  unconsciously  entertained  notions  that 
riches,  love,  fame  might  be  attained  by  violating  the 
moral  edicts  of  society;  these  ideas  may  have  obtruded 
but  a  few  seconds  to  be  immediately  dismissed.  But 
once  they  made  their  appearance  they  were  repressed 
in  Balzac's  unconscious,  and  emerged  in  the  characters 
of  Vautrin  and  other  villains  who  are  the  author's  un- 
conscious. 


VILLAIN  PORTRAYALS  AND  CYNICISM     103 

Balzac  understood  that  vice  often  triumphed  and  that 
the  way  of  virtue  was  often  hard.  "Do  you  believe 
that  there  is  any  absolute  standard  in  this  world?  De- 
spise mankind  and  find  out  the  meshes  that  you  can  slip 
through  in  the  net  of  the  code."  Vautrin  here  gives 
Balzac's  inner  unconscious  secret  away.  The  author 
was  not  aware  that  he  drew  upon  himself  unconsciously 
in  depicting  Vautrin.  This,  of  course,  does  not  mean 
that  Balzac  agreed  with  Vautrin.  We  remember  Eugene 
shouted  out  to  Vautrin,  "Silence,  sir!  I  will  not  hear 
any  more;  you  make  me  doubt  myself."  The  author 
merely  got  his  unconscious  into  one  of  his  leading  vil- 
lains, just  as  Milton  did  in  Satan,  as  Goethe  did  in 
Mephistopheles. 

Vautrin  is  Lucien  de  Rubempre's  evil  influence  also, 
and  Balzac  saw  how  disastrously  he  himself  might  have 
ended  his  life  had  he  heeded  his  unconscious,  his  Jacques 
Collin. 

Since  literature  is  often  depicting  struggles  and  con- 
flicts with  our  evil  instincts,  it  deals  directly  with  the 
material  of  the  unconscious;  for  the  unconscious  that 
psychoanalysis  is  concerned  with  is  that  which  springs 
from  repressions  forced  upon  us  by  society  as  well  as 
by  fate.  In  literature  the  unconscious  appears  under 
various  symbols  and  disguises,  just  as  it  does  in  dreams. 
The  devil,  for  example,  is  but  our  unconscious,  symbol- 
ised. He  represents  our  hidden  primitive  desires 
struggling  to  emerge;  he  is  the  eruption  of  our  forbidden 
desires.  His  deeds  are  the  accomplished  wishes  of  our 
own  unconscious.  We  are  interested  in  the  devil  be- 
cause he  is  ourselves  in  our  dreams  and  unguarded  mo- 
ments. 

The  fascination  that  the  villain  has  for  us  is  because 
our    unconscious    recognises    in    him    a    long-forgotten 


104    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

brother.  True,  our  moral  sense  soon  prevails,  and  we 
rejoice  when  the  rascal  is  worsted,  but  he  represents 
the  author's  unconscious  as  well  as  our  own.  Any  one 
who  has  read  of  the  thoughts  and  conduct  of  Raskolni- 
koff  in  Crime  and  Punishment,  or  of  Julian  Sorel  in  Red 
and  Black,  or  of  George  Aurispa  in  The  Triumph  of 
Death,  will  see  that  much  of  the  authors  themselves,  or 
rather  their  unconscious  selves,  is  drawn  in  these  crimi- 
nals. Dostoievsky,  Stendhal  and  D'Annunzio  all  said 
to  themselves  in  writing:  "I  too  might  have  ended  like 
these  characters.  I  did  think  their  thoughts  and  a  slight 
circumstance  could  have  led  me  to  the  crimes  they  com- 
mitted." 

The  man  who  hates  a  vice  most  intensely  is  often 
just  the  man  who  has  something  of  it  in  his  own  nature, 
against  which  he  is  fighting.  The  author  sometimes  pun- 
ishes himself  in  his  novel  by  making  the  character  suffer 
for  engaging  in  the  course  of  life  that  the  author  him- 
self followed.  There  is  always  a  suspicion,  when  a 
writer  raves  most  furiously  against  a  crime  or  act,  that 
he  has  committed   that  deed  in  his  unconscious. 

in 

The  reason  La  Rochefoucauld,  author  of  the  Maxims, 
is  called  a  cynic  is  because  he  reveals  the  unconscious, 
at  the  bottom  of  which  is  self-love.  He  knows  that  there 
is  great  egotism,  nay  something  akin  to  depravity,  at  the 
root  of  our  emotions.  He  shows  us  much  in  our  psychic 
life  that  many  of  us  never  suspected  was  there.  When 
he  brings  it  forth  we  grow  indignant  and  yet  say  to  our- 
selves,  "How    true!" 

Let  us  examine  a  few  of  these  maxims  at  random  ard 
note  the  insight  into  the  unconscious  that  the  author 


VILLAIN  PORTRAYALS  AND  CYNICISM     105 

displays.  He  understood  that  repression  was  at  the  basis 
of  our  unconscious.  Take  the  following  sentence:  "Wit 
sometimes  enables  us  to  act  rudely  with  impunity." 
This  saying  anticipates  Freud's  analysis  of  wit  in  his 
Wit  and  the  Unconscious.  The  Frenchman  digs  up 
in  a  sentence  the  hidden  strata  of  the  unconscious.  La 
Rochefoucauld  recognised  that  we  must  curb  our  primi- 
tive instincts,  repress  our  private  wishes,  and  leave  our. 
irmermost  thoughts  unexpressed  in  order  to  adapt  our- 
selves to  people.  The  world  moves  by  concealing  for 
charity's,  and  often  decency's,  sake  its  unconscious. 
"Men  would  not  live  long  in  society,"  says  the  Maxims, 
"were  they  not  the  dupes  of  each  other." 

He  knew  that  our  primitive  instincts  could  be  sub- 
dued only  when  they  were  not  too  strong,  and  that  vir- 
tue was  practised  when  it  was  not  difficult  to  do  so. 
"When  our  vices  leave  us  we  flatter  ourselves  with  the 
idea  we  have  left  them."  "If  we  conquer  our  passions 
it  is  more  from  their  weakness  than  from  our  strength." 
"Perseverance  is  not  deserving  of  blame  or  praise,  as  it 
is  merely  the  continuance  of  tastes  and  feelings  which 
we  can  neither  create  nor  destroy." 

He  understood  the  great  part  played  by  vanity  in  the 
unconscious.  The  most  modest  of  us  are,  in  our  uncon- 
scious, vain.  "When  not  prompted  by  praise  we  say 
little."  "Usually  we  are  more  satirical  from  vanity  than 
malice."  "The  refusal  of  praise  is  only  the  wish  to  be 
praised  twice." 

La  Rochefoucauld  was  aware  of  the  unconscious 
"immoral"  instincts  in  virtuous  women.  Though  we  may 
dislike  him  for  some  of  his  remarks,  he,  however,  gave 
utterance  to  a  truth  when  he  asserted  that  women  do 
not  want  their  love  or  sex  feelings  repressed  any  more 
than  men  do.    "There  are  few  virtuous  women  who  are 


io6    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

not  tired  of  their  part."  "Virtue  in  woman  is  often 
love  of  reputation  and  repose."  Freud  went  a  step 
further  and  showed  that  women  usually  have  neurosis 
from  repressed  sex. 

The  Frenchman  also  understood  the  role  played  by  the 
unconscious  in  friendship,  and  that  is  the  reason  he  made 
his  well-known  statement,  "In  the  adversity  of  our  best 
friends  we  always  find  something  which  is  not  wholly 
displeasing  to  us."  He  might  have  been  less  brutal  had 
he  stated  his  meaning  directly  in  words  to  the  follow- 
ing effect:  When  we  strive  for  the  same  goal  as  our 
friend  and  he  reaches  it  and  we  do  not,  his  success 
hurts  our  vanity  and  we  would  almost  prefer  that  he 
too  had  failed.  We  are  pleased  by  his  success  only  if 
we  would  profit  thereby. 

La  Rochefoucauld's  statement,  "It  is  well  that  we 
know  not  all  our  wishes,"  will  be  appreciated  by  students 
of  psychoanalysis. 

To  conclude.  La  Rochefoucauld  always  read  between 
the  lines  in  deeds  he  saw.  He  fathomed  the  hidden 
motives  of  our  conduct.  Note  the  great  powers  of  ob- 
servation he  displayed  in  the  following:  "Too  great  a 
hurry  to  discharge  an  obligation  is  an  ingratitude." 
"The  gratitude  of  most  men  is  but  a  secret  desire  of  re- 
ceiving greater  benefits." 

He  recognised  that  life  is  often  possible  only  by  a 
process  of  self-deception,  but  that  too  much  of  such  de- 
ception is  responsible  for  individual  and  social  evils. 
There  are  times  when  the  truth  about  our  unconscious 
must  be  told,  no  matter  how  painful. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

GENIUS  AS  A  PRODUCT  OF  THE  UNCONSCIOUS 


In  Studying  the  psychology  of  authorship  by  means  of 
psychoanalysis  we  learn  something  about  the  unconsci- 
ous growth  of  an  author's  book ;  this  phase  of  its  process 
has  not  been  universally  admitted.  We  are  often  told 
certain  incidents  gave  rise  to  the  writing  of  a  volume,  but 
they  were  only  the  precipitating  factors.  The  book  had 
shaped  itself  unconsciously  in  the  author's  mind  long  be- 
fore; it  only  gets  itself  projected  in  an  endurable  form. 
So  though  Stevenson  tells  us  that  the  shape  of  a  map  of 
an  island  took  his  fancy  and  gave  birth  to  Treasure 
Island,  we  know  as  a  matter  of  fact  that  he  had,  as  a 
boy,  for  many  years  been  leading  mentally  the  life  of  the 
treasure  hunters.  Stevenson  himseli  relates  how  the 
brown  faces  of  his  characters  peeped  out  upon  him  from 
unexpected  quarters.    The  map  just  set  him  in  action. 

Let  me  sum  up  briefly  the  growth  of  a  literary  per- 
formance from  a  psychoanalytical  standpoint.  Let  us 
assume  that  the  author  at  some  time  of  his  life  was 
placed  amidst  circumstances  the  reality  of  which  jarred 
on  him,  offended  his  sense  of  beauty,  wrecked  his  happi- 
ness and  frustrated  his  most  cherished  desires.  Deprived 
of  a  world  that  he  wished  to  inhabit,  he  built  one  in 
his  fantasies  and  day  dreams,  one  that  was  the  very 

107 


io8    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

opposite  of  that  in  which  he  was  constrained  to  dwell. 
If  he  was  toiling  in  barren  labour  he  pictured  himself  at 
congenial  work,  or  leisure;  if  he  dwelt  in  squalor  and  was 
deprived  of  necessities,  he  mentally  placed  himself  in 
beautiful  surroundings,  rolling  in  luxury,  and  in  posses- 
sion of  property  he  prized  most.  If  he  had  no  one  to 
love  he  formed  an  ideal  for  himself,  with  whom  he  lived. 
If  the  loved  one  did  not  return  his  love  he  depicted  him- 
self as  wed  to  her. 

That  literature  is  influenced  and  created  by  the  wishes 
of  the  character  or  author  may  be  seen  readily.  A  tale 
of  Ernest  Renan  sheds  light  on  this  theory,  and  also 
serves  as  a  valuable  illustration  how  neurotics  and  insane 
people  derive  their  illnesses  from  unfulfilled  love  desires, 
and  how  they  build  phantasies  where  those  wants  are 
satisfied.  Pleasant  pictures  appear  in  day  dreams,  but 
these  often  assume  such  reality  that  the  victim  cannot 
tell  the  fanciful  from  the  actual.  In  the  first  sketch  in 
his  autobiography,  called  The  Flax  Crusher,  Renan  relates 
a  pathetic  story  of  a  daughter  of  a  flax  crusher  who  lost 
her  mind  because  her  love  for  a  priest  was  unreturned. 
She  unconsciously  carried  out  her  wishes  in  her  actions 
and  thoughts.  She  would  take  a  log  of  wood  and  dress 
it  up  in  rags  and  rock  and  kiss  the  artificial  infant  and 
put  it  in  the  cradle  at  night.  She  imagined  that  this 
was  her  child  by  the  priest.  Thus  she  stilled  the  maternal 
urge.  She  fancied  that  she  was  keeping  house  for  him. 
She  would  hem  and  mark  linen,  often  interlacing  his  and 
her  own  initials.  She  finally  was  led  to  commit  theft 
from  his  home.  This  story  was  taken  from  real  life. 
The  artist  who  is  frustrated  in  love  acts  as  this  girl;  he 
imagines  that  his  love  is  being  fulfilled  and  that  he  is 
living  with  the  loved  one. 
A   classic    example    of    fantasy   building   is   Charles 


GENIUS  AS  PRODUCT  OF  UNCONSCIOUS     109 

Lamb's  Dream  Children.  Rejected  by  the  sweetheart  of 
his  youth,  Ann  Simmons,  he  pictured  himself  married 
to  her  and  surrounded  by  their  children  and  talking  to 
them  and  entertaining  them.  He  projected  a  world  as 
it  might  have  been,  and  as  he  desired  it  for  himself;  he 
wakes  up  from  his  day  dream — the  children  were  merely 
those  of  his  imagination. 

Day  dreams  then  are  the  beginning  of  literary  creation. 
In  them  we  create  a  world  for  ourselves,  and  we  make 
actual  people  fit  into  that  world.  After  such  continual 
living  in  a  fictitious  realm  a  writer  seeks  to  express 
himself,  and  if  he  is  an  artist,  to  give  it  endurable 
form.  If  the  dreamer  dwells  too  long  in  one  imaginative 
abode  he  may  lose  the  faculty  of  distinguishing  the  real 
from  the  ideal.  He  may  become  subject  to  hallucinations 
and  become  utterly  unbalanced  as  did  Renan's  flax 
crusher's  daughter. 

The  literary  man  generally  saves  himself  from  neurosis 
by  putting  his  dream  into  artistic  shape;  though  writing 
of  their  deams  and  troubles  has  not  prevented  artists 
from  going  mad,  nor  continuing  to  brood  over  the 
troubles  that  had  already  inspired  their  works.  But 
the  point  of  difference  is  clearly  established  between  the 
neurotic  and  the  artist.  One  dreams  on  till  he  is  res- 
cued from  going  mad  by  a  physician's  help,  if  possible; 
the  other  partly  cures  himself  by  self-expression,  and  at 
the  same  time  gives  the  world  a  piece  of  art  or  literature, 
which  consoles  many,  because  they  too  have  either  had 
or  witnessed  similar  troubles,  or  consider  themselves 
possible  victims  to  such  sorrows. 

Very  few  English  writers  understood  the  mechanism 
of  day  dreams  better  than  Dr.  Johnson,  as  the  chapter 
in  Rasselas  on  "The  Dangerous  Prevalence  of  Imagi- 
nation" shows. 


no    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

One  of  the  best  illustrations  of  the  psychoanalytic 
theory  of  authorship  detailed  by  the  writer  himself  oc- 
curs in  a  once-famous  EngHsh  novel,  Kingsley's  Alton 
Locke,  published  in  1850.  Alton  Locke  tells  us  how  he 
came  to  write  poetry.  The  chapter  entitled  "First  Love" 
recounts  the  process,  and  we  learn  how  because  he  led 
a  life  of  drudgery,  he  created  a  far  more  pleasant  one  in 
his  imagination  and  then  unconsciously  sought  to  make 
a  record  of  this  life. 

n 

Psychoanalysis  is  always  interested  in  learning  ex- 
actly how  literary  masterpieces  are  born.  Just  as 
it  seeks  to  know  through  dreams  what  are  some  of  the 
hidden  secrets  in  the  unconscious,  so  it  tries  \j  discover 
what  unconscious  life  made  the  writer  project  his  vision. 

Two  of  the  most  famous  love  stories  of  the  eighteenth 
century  which  had  a  personal  background,  and  whose 
evolution  have  been  told  by  the  authors,  themselves, 
were  Rousseau's  Nouvelle  Heloise  (1760),  and  Goethe's 
Sorrows  0}  Werther  (1774).  They  were  the  predecessors 
of  the  entire  field  of  autobiographical  love-lorn  lugubri- 
ous literature  that  pervaded  Europe  in  the  early  decades 
of  the  nineteenth  century.  George  Brandes  has  shown 
how  Chateaubriand,  Madame  de  Stael,  Senancour, 
Byron,  George  Sand  and  others  owed  much  of  their 
methods  of  recording  their  love  troubles  to  these  two 
novels.  We  to-day  scarcely  realise  the  great  vogue  that 
these  tales  at  one  time  had. 

The  authors  have  given  us  accounts  of  the  birth  of 
these  novels.  Both  of  these  geniuses  had  been  frus- 
trated in  their  loves;  as  a  result  they  created  mental 
fantasies  and  lived  in  a  more  pleasant  world  of  their 
own  creation,  and  finally,  bursting  with  desire  for  ex- 


GENIUS  AS  PRODUCT  OF  UNCONSCIOUS     in 

pression,  produced  their  novels.  The  unconscious  life 
buried  in  them  came  forth  and  was  crystallised  in  art. 
Rdusseau's  Confessions  and  Goethe's  autobiography, 
Poetry  and  Truth,  tell  us  how  the  novels  came  to  light. 
In  the  ninth  book  of  the  Confessions,  Rousseau  in- 
forms us  that  when  he  reached  the  age  of  forty-five,  he 
realised  that  he  had  really  never  enjoyed  true  love.  As 
a  result  he  began  living  in  a  fantastic  world  where  his 
craving  was  satisfied.  He  realised  his  wishes  in  his  day 
dreams.  "The  impossibility  of  attaining  real  beings," 
he  says,  "threw  me  into  the  regions  of  chimera,  and  see- 
ing nothing  in  existence  worthy  of  my  delirium,  I  sought 
food  for  it  in  the  ideal  world,  which  my  imagination 
quickly  peopled  with  beings  after  my  own  heart."  He 
tells  us  how  he  valued  love  and  friendship,  and  that  he 
created  two  female  friends  according  to  his  taste,  that  he 
gave  one  of  them  a  lover,  who  was  also  the  platonic 
friend  of  the  other  lady;  that  in  this  friend  and  lover 
he  drew  his  own  portrait.  He  imagined  that  there  were 
to  be  no  rivalries  or  pain.  These  fictions,  he  continues, 
gained  in  consistence.  He  then  had  an  inclination  to 
put  on  paper  this  situation  of  fancy.  "Recollecting 
everything  I  had  felt  during  my  youth,  this,  in  some 
measure,  gave  me  an  object  to  that  desire  of  loving 
which  I  had  never  been  able  to  satisfy,  and  by  which  I 
felt  myself  consumed."  Here  we  have  the  secret.  He 
sought  in  art  what  he  had  not  in  reality.  At  first  he 
wrote  incoherent  letters,  just  as  his  feelings  prompted 
him,  and  he  thus  completed  the  two  first  parts  of  the 
novel  (which  is  in  the  form  of  letters)  without  a  con- 
scious effort  to  make  a  connected  work. 

At  this  time  Rousseau,  who  was  a  married  man,  fell 
in  love  with  the  wife  of  D'Holbach,  Sophia  D'Houdetot. 
He  loved  her  madly.     He  says,  "It  was  not  until  after 


ti2     THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

her  departure  that,  wishing  to  think  of  Julia  (his  hero- 
ine), I  was  struck  with  surprise  at  being  unable  to  think 
of  anything  but  Madame  D'Holbach."  He  now  identi- 
fied the  real  with  the  ideal;  he  found  the  woman  of  his 
dreams.  But  now  his  troubles  began.  Union  with  his  be- 
loved Countess  was  impossible.  New  emotions  rose  with- 
in him,  as  material  for  his  novel.  The  work  really  wrote 
itself.  He  originally  formed  an  ideal  because  he  was 
not  loved  by  any  one  who  fulfilled  that  conception. 
When  he  discovered  such  a  person  and  she  was  beyond 
his  attainment,  he  imagined  himself  as  her  lover.  All 
the  misery  he  recorded  had  its  counterpart  in  his  personal 
experience.  Without  the  unconscious  reveries  which  he 
indulged  in  as  a  result  of  his  needs  and  tribulations, 
the  novel  would  not  have  been  written. 

After  the  story  was  published,  women  worshipped  the 
author.  It  was  recognised  that  he  was  the  hero  of  the 
book,  and  it  was  generally  believed  that  the  charac- 
ters were  not  fictitious.  The  novel  gives  us  an  account' 
of  the  real  Rousseau  at  least  as  fully  as  the  Confessions 
themselves,  where  facts  are  not  always  truthfully  re- 
ported. 

Goethe  has  recorded  just  as  minutely  the  origin  of  his 
Sorrows  of  Werther.  He  traces  the  book  back  to  his 
love  for  Charlotte  Buff,  the  betrothed  of  a  friend  of  his. 
He  resolved  to  give  free  play  to  the  idiosyncrasies  of 
his  inner  nature.  He  describes  how  he  had  day  dreams 
and  how  he  held  mental  dialogues  with  different  people. 
He  then  was  led  to  record  these  fancies  on  paper.  The 
substances  of  his  novel  "were  first  talked  over  with 
several  individuals  in  such  imaginary  dialogues,  and 
only  later  in  the  process  of  composition  itself  were  made 
to  appear  as  if  directed  to  one  single  friend  and  sympa- 
thiser."    He  became  weary  of  life,  and  had  suicidal 


GENIUS  AS  PRODUCT  OF  UNCONSCIOUS     113 

thoughts.  He  then  heard  of  the  suicide  of  his  friend 
Jerusalem,  who  had  been  in  love  with  a  married  woman. 
Goethe  saw  that  he  was  really  in  the  same  position  as  his 
friend;  his  loved  one  belonged  to  another.  "On  the  in- 
stant," Goethe  goes  on,  "the  plan  of  Werther  was  formed, 
and  the  whole  drew  together,  and  became  a  solid  mass.  I 
was  naturally  led  to  breathe  into  the  work  I  had  in  hand 
all  the  warmth  which  makes  no  distinction  between  the 
imaginary  and  the  actual."  He  wrote  the  book  in  four 
weeks.  "I  had  written  the  little  volume,  almost  uncon- 
sciously like  a  somnambulist."  As  a  result  he  freed  him- 
self from  his  suffering.  The  artist  stepped  in  and  cured 
the  man.  Goethe  illustrates  the  theory  that  artistic 
creation  acts  as  a  self-cure  of  a  developing  neurosis. 
"By  this  composition,"  Goethe  wrote,  "more  than  by 
any  other,  I  had  freed  myself  from  that  stormy  element 
in  which  ...  I  had  been  so  violently  tossed  to  and 
fro.  I  felt  as  if  I  had  made  a  general  confession  and  was 
once  more  free  and  happy,  and  justified  in  beginning  a 
new  life." 

The  public  thought  that  the  book  was  solely  the  his- 
tory of  young  Jerusalem's  tragic  love  affair,  and  did  not 
altogether  understand  that  the  cry  was  Goethe's  own. 
His  mental  dialogues  and  the  longings  of  his  inner  spirit 
found  expression  in  this  novel.  His  sufferings  were  un- 
decipherable by  the  public,  he  tells  us,  because  he  worked 
in  obscurity.  He  also  gave  the  attributes  of  several 
women  to  Lotte,  and  hence  several  ladies  claimed  to  have 
been  the  original  models. 

Thus  we  see  how  two  great  love  stories  were  created 
almost  unconsciously  by  the  authors.  Day  dreams  and 
actual  love;  the  longing  for  reality,  for  lack  of  which 
imaginary  situations  were  created;  and  the  putting  down 
jn  tjie  form  of  letters  and  dialogues  the  ideas  and  emp- 


114    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

tions  that  burst  forth,  all  led  to  the  shaping  of  the  liter- 
ary product. 

Ill 

Psychoanalysis  sheds  some  light  on  the  nature  of 
genius,  and  especially  literary  genius.  But  it  does  not 
define  it  within  hard  and  fast  lines. 

Literary  works  are  largely  the  result  of  repressions 
that  the  author  has  suffered;  he  has  been  led  as  the  re- 
sult of  them  to  cry  out  his  sorrow  or  to  depict  ideal  sit- 
uations where  such  grief  as  his  does  not  exist.  He  must 
write  so  that  people  who  have  had  similar  repressions, 
or  who  can  imagine  them,  will  find  a  personal  appeal  in 
the  works  they  read.  But  the  situations  described  must 
also,  besides  evoking  an  emotional  appeal,  stir  the 
readers  intellectually,  so  that  they  sympathise  where  the 
writer  counted  on  sympathy.  When  the  author  writes 
only  of  his  joys,  the  unconscious  is  also  at  work. 

The  writer  also  must  be  a  master  of  his  art,  so  that 
fundamental  rules  of  composition  and  outrages  on  com- 
mon sense  he  does  not  violate. 

Especially  when  the  author  has  discovered  new  fea- 
tures of  his  unconscious  life,  or  has  been  led  to  present 
original  and  profound  ideas  as  a  result  of  such  discover- 
ies; particularly  when  he  moves  the  reader  with 
intensity  and  evokes  a  passionate  response,  does  the 
writer  begin  to  merit  the  name  of  genius.  When  we  say 
that  a  genius  is  a  man  who  discovers  a  new  truth  or 
depicts  beauty,  we  really  mean  that  he  is  a  man  who, 
having  experienced  a  repression,  has  been  led  to  make 
certain  conclusions  from  that  event,  that  society  has 
not  wished  to  admit;  he  is  a  great  artist  when  he  gives 
an  effective  description  of  that  repression;  he  is  a  great 
thinker  when  he  sees  certain  ways  by  which  that  repres- 


GENIUS  AS  PRODUCT  OF  UNCONSCIOUS     115 

sion  may  be  avoided,  and  he  is  a  humanitarian  when  he 
informs  the  world  how  to  attain  a  form  of  happiness 
that  had  been  denied  him. 

We  thus  do  away  with  the  very  pernicious  doctrine 
that  genius  is  a  form  of  degeneracy  or  insanity.  Geniuses 
are  often  sufferers  from  neurosis,  or  describe  characters 
suffering  from  them;  they  are  not  degenerates,  as  Lom- 
broso  and  Nordau  would  have  us  believe.  A  neurotic 
person  and  a  degenerate  one  are  not  necessarily  the  same. 
The  term  "degenerate"  is  not  the  proper  name  for  men 
like  Ibsen  or  Tolstoi,  no  matter  how  repugnant  their  ideas 
might  be  to  people.  Nor  does  it  follow  that  because 
some  poets  like  Villon,  Verlaine  and  Wilde  had  spent 
time  in  jail  for  crimes,  their  poems  are  to  be  stamped 
as  degenerate  products.  While  it  is  apparent  that  some 
of  the  author's  insanity  appears  in  works  by  Swift, 
Rousseau,  Maupassant,  Nietzsche  and  Strindberg,  their 
masterpieces  are  noble  works  of  art. 

The  faculty  of  literary  genius  is  not  possessed  by  a 
few;  many  people  possess  some  of  its  qualities.  Intelli- 
gent or  sincere  lovers  have  often  written  love  letters  that 
never  got  into  print  which  were  stamped  with  the  quali- 
ties of  genius.  Highly  gifted  people  in  private  life  often 
utter  thoughts  which  if  collected  and  published  would 
constitute  works  that  show  genius.  There  have  been 
many  people  who  have  uttered  sentiments  as  wise  as 
those  found  in  Boswell's  Lije  of  Johnson,  or  Eckermann's 
Conversations  of  Goethe,  but  the  ideas  were  not  reduced 
to  writing,  either  by  the  speaker  or  a  friend.  Goethe 
once  said  that  every  genius  has  in  his  lifetime  been  ac- 
quainted with  men  who  were  obscure  and  unproductive, 
but  who  possessed  greater  intellects,  more  originality 
than  those  geniuses  themselves. 

There  is  no  dividing  line  between  the  genius  and  the 


ii6    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

talented  or  even  average  person,  any  more  than  there 
is  a  marked  boundary  between  the  normal  and  the  ab- 
normal. 

The  genius,  however,  always  has  something  of  the 
pioneer  in  him;  even  after  his  work  is  no  longer  new, 
he  retains  the  title  of  genius,  though  there  are  people  who 
can  write  better  works  than  he. 

The  world  has  agreed  on  some  geniuses.  Most  people 
are  ready  to  admit  that  a  few  men  of  letters  like  Shake- 
speare, Moliere,  Cervantes,  Goethe  and  Balzac  were 
geniuses  of  the  first  order.  But  when  we  are  concerned 
with  literary  men  who  have  done  good  work,  it  is  not 
easy  to  say  whether  they  were  geniuses,  though  we  are 
ready  enough  to  admit  that  they  had  the  qualities  that 
make  up  genius. 

The  genius  must  be  able  to  do  more  than  write  of  the 
repressions  which  he  has  actually  experienced;  he  must 
be  a  master  of  technique  and  means  of  expression.  He 
must  be  able  to  describe  with  force  and  imagination, 
those  repressions  he  has  witnessed  others  suffer.  The 
more  use  he  makes  of  his  unconscious,  the  nearer  he  gets 
to  truth,  and  it  has  often  been  the  lot  of  genius  to  depict 
those  very  emotions  which  society  wants  to  be  kept  in 
the  unconscious;  and  the  more  he  draws  on  his  uncon- 
scious, the  less  use  he  has  for  actual  experience. 

Yet  the  ability  to  present  works  of  human  interest 
that  appeal  to  the  public  does  not  alone  constitute 
genius;  otherwise  many  of  the  thrillers  of  the  movies 
would  be  works  of  genius.  Nor  does  the  writing  of  sad 
tales  or  giving  ideal  pictures  make  genius.  There  must 
be  an  important  idea,  or  the  presentation  of  the  emotion 
in  a  particularly  compelling  manner.  Then  there  is 
something  cumulative  about  genius;  we  expect  from  it  a 
repetition  of  literary  feats  that  is  beyond  the  power  of 


GENIUS  AS  PRODUCT  OF  UNCONSCIOUS     117 

most  writers ;  we  are  not  contented  with  an  isolated  liter- 
ary effort.  Still,  there  are  poets  who  are  regarded  as 
geniuses  though  they  have  produced  but  one  or  a  few 
pieces  of  importance. 

The  literary  genius  then  has  a  keen  insight  into  the 
psychology  of  the  repression  of  the  emotions  and  can 
beautifully  express  this  repression  and  make  valuable 
intellectual  deductions  therefrom.  He  can  vary  this 
work  for  many  years,  and  move  people  who  think. 


CHAPTER  IX 

LITERARY    EMOTIONS    AND    THE    NEUROSES 


The  emotions  that  literature  deals  with  bear  a  close 
analogy  to  symptoms  in  the  neuroses  or  nervous  diseases. 
Every  emotional  conflict,  every  repressed  love  is  an  in- 
cipient neurosis,  and  often  the  sufferings  described  in 
books  are  full-fledged  cases  of  neuroses.  The  author 
may  unintentionally  draw  characters  suffering  griefs 
which  the  physician  can  recognise  as  analogous  to  the 
cases  he  has  observed  in  practice.  The  writer  may  show 
how  the  character  cures  himself  of  his  neuroses  by  being 
made  aware  of  the  unconscious  forces  struggling  within 
him,  or  how  the  sufferer  effects  a  recovery  by  sublimation, 
or  how  he  succumbs  to  his  disease. 
;,  Some  authors  like  Rousseau  in  his  Confessions,  or 
B  Strindberg  in  his  Confessions  of  a  Fool,  give  us  detailed 
accounts  of  their  neuroses,  though  they  may  not  always 
exactly  fathom  the  causes.  Poets  have  in  their  collec- 
tions of  lyrics  told  us  of  the  sufferings  that  they  have 
personally  gone  through,  and  the  trained  scientist  can 
see  to  what  neuroses  the  symptoms  described  are  re- 
lated. lOther  authors  have  in  the  guise  of  fictitious  char- 
acters described  the  neuroses  they  have  been  suffering. 
Byron  in  his  Manfred,  Hauptmann  in  his  Heinrich  in  the 
Sunken  Bell,  Shakespeare  in  Hamlet,  Goethe  in  Faust, 
have  told  us  of  love  repressions  that  were  their  own,  and 

ii8 


LITERARY  EMOTIONS  AND  NEUROSES     119 

these  characters  can  be  studied  by  critics  as  neurotic 
patients  are  analysed  by  physicians. 

The  author  may  draw  himself  in  the  guise  of  a  char- 
acter who  is  utterly  insane,  as  Cervantes  did  in  Don 
Quixote.  One  feels  here  that  the  author  was  his  own 
knight;  in  fact,  he  too  had  a  sneaking  fondness  for 
books  of  chivalry,  and  the  familiarity  that  his  hero  shows 
with  them  is  good  evidence  that  Cervantes  was  a  careful 
student  of  that  kind  of  literature.  He  too  had  been 
bruised  by  windmills;  he  too  found  that  the  real  did  not 
coincide  with  his  ideals.  It  is  most  likely  that  Don 
Quixote  developed  his  mental  illness  by  his  abstinence 
from  love,  by  living  in  fancy  with  the  high  dames  he 
read  about,  and  by  cherishing  an  affection  unrecipro- 
cated for  the  peasant  girl  he  called  in  his  madness  Dul- 
cinea  del  Toboso.  At  least  these  factors  cannot  be 
ignored  in  the  insanity  he  developed  from  'reading  books 
of  chivalry.  It  is  not  improbable  that  Cervantes  drew 
on  a  real  woman  for  Dulcinea;  he  too  had  wasted  affection 
on  some  woman,  ignorant  and  coarse,  whom  he  took  for 
a  lady  of  high  degree.  We  do  know  that  in  the  year  he 
married,  in  1584,  at  the  age  of  thirty-seven,  he  had  an 
illegitimate  daughter  by  a  certain  woman.  There  is 
also  a  tradition  that  he  had  a  few  years  previously  a 
daughter  by  a  noble  lady  in  Portugal,  and  though  this 
story  is  discredited,  it  must  have  had  some  basis  in  real- 
ity. However,  Cervantes,  though  not,  like  his  knight, 
suffering  a  mental  ailment,  must  have  had  a  neurosis  on 
which  he  drew  for  the  material  of  this  novel;  it  was  no 
doubt  caused  by  his  worship  of  a  Dulcinea  del  Toboso. 

Writers  like  D'Annunzio  and  Dostoievsky  have  given 
us  complete  cases  of  neuroticism;  they  described  them- 
selves in  their  books.  Since  the  line  between  the  normal 
and  the  abnormal  psychic  condition  is  hard  to  draw,  and 


120    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

we  all  daily  or  at  different  crises  in  our  lives  overstep 
the  limits,  the  works  of  literary  men  as  a  rule  deal  with 
those  cases  where  the  morbid  and  normal  merge.  Freud 
said  that  no  author  has  avoided  all  contact  with  psychia- 
try. And  he  is  assuredly  right.  Dickens's  eccentric 
characters,  Balzac's  heroes  and  villains  in  the  grip  of 
great  passions,  neurotics  like  Bunyan,  A'Kempis  and 
Pascal,  whose  repressed  love  no  doubt  made  them  relig- 
ious maniacs;  lago,  Richard  the  Third,  Macbeth,  Ham- 
let, Anthony  and  Timon  of  Shakespeare,  the  leading 
characters  of  Ibsen,  the  unhappy  Heine,  De  Musset,  Bau- 
delaire, Verlaine,  Leopardi,  Carducci,  Burns,  Byron,  Shel- 
ley, Keats,  Poe  and  Hearn  can  all  be  studied  like  patients 
suffering  from  neuroses.  In  fact  all  characters  in  fiction 
who  suffer  are  related  to  neurotics,  for  sex  and  love  is 
usually  the  cause  of  their  troubles,  for  as  Freud  says,  "In 
a  normal  sex  life  no  neurosis  is  possible."  The  author  oc- 
casionally deals  with  severe  cases  of  neuroses,  and  the 
psychiatrists  with  mild  ones,  and  their  provinces  are  often 
the  same.  The  writer  details  his  case  with  art,  and  lays 
stress  on  the  emotional  phase  and  deduces  ideas,  while 
the  psychiatrist  gives  us  bare  scientific  analyses.  "The 
author,"  says  Freud,  "cannot  yield  to  the  psychiatrist 
nor  the  psychiatrist  to  the  author,  and  the  poetic  treat- 
ment of  a  theme  from  psychiatry  may  result  correctly 
without  damage  to  beauty."    {Delusion  and  Dream.) 

Cases  of  neurosis  often  especially  lend  themselves  fo 
literary  treatment.  [Think  of  the  women  sufferers  in  lit- 
erature like  Madam©  Bovary,  Hester  Prynne,  Anna  Kare- 
nina,  Hedda  Gabler,  Magda;  t^ou  can  always  trace  their 
troubles  to  love  repressions.  /Fictitious  characters  who 
have  not  had  a  natural  outlet  for  their  love  and  have 
been  abstinent,  or  have  had  a  love  disappointment  or 


LITERARY  EMOTIONS  AND  NEUROSES     121 

have  suffered  from  aberrations  of  the  infantile  love  life, 
present  phases  of  neuroses. 

Freud  has  studied  Jensen's  novel  Gradiva,  and  shows 
how  the  leading  character  has  troubles  analogous  to  the 
psychoneuroses,  and  cures  himself  unconsciously  by  the 
methods  of  psychoanalysis. 

Literature  records  many  fully  developed  cases  of 
neuroses.  A  story  like  the  Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher 
presents  a  complete  case  of  a  neurosis.  Characters  in 
literature  who  commit  suicide,  like  Werther  and  Hedda 
Gabler,  are  victims  of  neurosis;  sex  is  usually  at  the  bot- 
tom of  their  difficulties.  Every  sufferer  then  in  literature 
is  a  partly  or  fully  developed  case  of  neurosis ;  at  least  an 
emotional  disturbance  due  to  sex  causes,  akin  to  the  neu- 
rosis, is  always  present.  This  fact  is  sufficient  for  the  lay- 
men to  know  without  their  making  a  deep  inquiry  into  the 
nature  of  these  neuroses  and  attempting  to  classify  them. 
Here  the  work  of  the  physician  begins  and  a  penetrating 
insight  into  the  species  of  neuroses  described  in  literature 
can  be  made  only  by  the  psychoanalyst. 

Nevertheless,  there  are  some  cases  that  even  the  lay- 
man may  recognise  as  soon  as  he  has  familiarised  him- 
self with  the  Freudian  views  of  the  neuroses.  In  English 
the  best  technical  books  on  the  subject  are  the  translation 
of  Hitschman's  Freud's  Theories  of  Neuroses,  Brill's  Psy- 
choanalysis and  Brink's  Morbid  Fears  and  Compulsions. 
Some  of  Freud's  own  essays  have  been  translated  by  Dr. 
Brill  In  Selected  Papers  on  Hysteria. 

Freud  divides  the  neuroses  into  two  classes,  the  true 
or  actual  neuroses,  and  the  psychoneuroses. 

The  true  neuroses  are  neurasthenia  and  anxiety  neu- 
rosis, which  formerly  was  included  under  neurasthenia, 
but  which  Freud  set  off  as  a  separate  class.  He  calls  these 
true  neuroses  because  there  are  present  abnormal  dis- 


122    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

turbances  of  the  sexual  function,  not  necessarily  due  to 
heredity.  Neurasthenia  is  due  to  excessive  physical 
abuse,  and  the  anxiety  neurosis  results  from  abstinence 
or  unsatisfactory  gratification.  All  agencies  which  pre- 
vent the  psychic  utilisation  of  the  physical  excitement 
lead  to  anxiety  neurosis.  Literature  gives  us  cases  of 
true  neuroses,  but  they  are  not  as  frequent  as  the  other 
class,  the  psychoneuroses. 
^  The  psychoneuroses  are  due  to  repressions  but  date 
back  to  infancy;  the  influence  of  heredity  is  important; 
unconscious  factors  are  at  work.  The  child's  relation 
to  his  parents  and  his  infantile  sex  life  have  great  in- 
fluence on  his  future.  The  crisis  comes  when  a  love 
repression  in  later  life  breaks  out.  The  psychoneuroses 
are  hysteria,  compulsion  neurosis,  and  mixed  cases, 
especially  anxiety  hysteria. 

In  hysteria  the  patient  suffers  from  reminiscences,  and 
his  recent  experiences  are  unconsciously  attached  to  in- 
fantile sexual  impressions.  Instead  of  solving  his  love 
difficulties  he  builds  fantasies.  Certain  mental  impres- 
sions remain  fixed.  The  early  painful  effects  struggle 
to  consciousness,  but  instead  are  transformed  into  uncom- 
mon inhibitions,  by  a  process  known  as  conversion. 

In  compulsion  or  obsessional  neuroses  we  also  have 
unconscious  sexual  factors  at  work  since  infancy,  but 
the  effect  of  the  painful  idea  affixes  itself  to  other  ideas, 
producing  obsessions.  These  are  transformed  reproaches 
which  have  escaped  the  repression.  Morbid  fears,  doubts 
and  temptations  are  the  result. 

The  most  common  form  of  neuroses  in  life,  and  hence 
most  described  in  literature,  is  anxiety  hysteria.  They 
partake  of  the  nature  of  hysteria  and  the  true  neurosis, 
anxiety.  "In  these  cases,"  says  Dr.  Hitschman,  "the 
anxiety  arises  not  only  from  somatic  (physical)  causes, 


LITERARY  EMOTIONS  AND  NEUROSES     123 

but  from  a  part  of  the  ungratified  libido  which  embraces 
unconscious  complexes  and  through  the  repression  of 
these  gives  rise  to  neurotic  anxiety."  The  excitation  is 
psychic  as  well  as  physical. 

Literature  abounds  then  chiefly; Jn  the  psychoneuroses_ 
an3"e'specially  anxiety  neurosis. 

"^All  literature  where  the  author  is  recalling  old  griefs 
on  which  he  still  broods,  looking  upon  them  as  if  they 
had  happened  yesterday,  are  related  to  hysteria.  In- 
cessant complaints  about  early  love  disappointments,  re- 
calling all  the  incidents,  constant  memories  of  the  mother 
and  of  childhood  days,  and  obstinate  clinging  to  ideas 
and  pictures  that  were  uppermost  in  early  life,  are  re- 
lated to  hysteria.  Byron  and  Heine,  harking  back  all 
the  time  to  their  early  love  woes,  were  really  sufferers 
from  hysteria.  Lady  Macbeth,  as  Dr.  Coriat  has  shown, 
was  a  victim  of  hysteria. 

We  see  obsessions  at  work  in  characters  like  Ibsen's 
Brand  who  aims  at  all  or  nothing. 

We  find  most  troubles  described  in  literature  related 
to  anxiety  hysteria,  from  the  childish  griefs  of  David 
Copperfield,  Maggie  Tulliver  and  Jane  Eyre,  to  the  sad 
love  experiences  of  the  characters  of  Thomas  Hardy. 

Literature  is  largely  a  record  of  the  anxieties  and 
hysterias  of  humanity. 

n 

Byron  is  a  good  example  of  hysteria  in  literature.  He 
loved  Mary  Chaworth,  and  for  nineteen  years,  from  1805, 
the  date  of  her  marriage,  to  his  death  in  1824,  she 
figured  in  nearly  all  his  shorter  love  poems.  She  was 
Astarte  in  Manured.    She  is  Lady  Adeline  in  Don  Juan, 


124    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

she  is,  no  doubt,  "Thyrza";  she  figured  as  the  heroines 
of  his  eastern  tales. 

In  the  poem,  "The  Dream,"  he  refers  to  the  irony  of 

fate  that  married  each  of  them  unhappily,  and  he  de- 

'i  scribes  his  grief  because  he  never  wed  her.     When  the 

poem  was  published  her  husband  was  annoyed  and  cut 

Idown  some  trees  to  which  reference  was  made  in  the 

poem,-^"the  diadem  of  trees"  arranged  in  a  circle. 

There  are  nearly  fifty  lyrics  in  which  she  appears  be- 
yond doubt,  not  mentioning  the  bigger  poems  where  she 
often  is  present. 

The  last  lines  that  Byron  wrote  in  1824,  "I  watched 
thee  when  the  foe  was  at  my  side,"  refer  to  her: 

"To  thee — to  thee — e'en  in  the  grasp  of  death 
My  spirit  turned,  oh !  of  tener  than  it  might. 
Thus  much  and  more ;  and  yet  thou  lov'st  me  not 
And  never  wilt!    Love  dwells  not  in  our  will 
Nor  can  I  blame  thee,  though  it  be  my  lot 
To  strongly,  wrongly,  vainly  love  thee  still." 

The  word  "wrongly"  shows  that  Mary  was  married. 

She  is  referred  to  by  him  in  his  last  letters. 

The  "Last  Words  to  Greece,"  published  posthumously, 
refer  to  Mary,  and  contain  the  same  sentiment  of  his 
famous  poem,  "Oh  talk  to  me  not  of  a  name  great  in 
story,"  written  in  182 1,  and  also  posthumously  published. 
He  cares  more  about  Mary's  love  than  for  the  honours  he 
would  attain  as  hero  in  the  Grecian  War.  He  exclaims 
he  is  a  fool  of  passion,  and  that  the  maddening  fasci- 
nation of  Mary  can  depress  him  low  if  she  frowns. 

The  celebrated  poem  to  the  Po  River,  sent  May  8, 
1820,  to  Murray,  was  inspired  by  "private  feelings  and 
passions";  he  wrote  Murray  that  it  must  not  be  pub- 
lished. The  river  Po  in  the  poem  really  refers  to  the 
river  Trent,  in  England,  with  memories  of  which  Mary 
was  bound  to  him. 


LITERARY  EMOTIONS  AND  NEUROSES     125 

There  is  no  doubt  about  the  fact  that  most  of  the 
early  love  poems  of  Byron  relate  to  Mary.  Critics  have, 
however,  failed  to  note  her  influence  after  the  "The 
Dream,"  written  in  the  summer  of  181 6,  a  half  a  year 
after  his  wife  left  him.  But  the  reader  of  the  later 
cantos  of  Childe  Harold  and  Don  Juan  does  not  have 
to  search  too  closely  between  the  lines  to  detect  Mary's 
presence. 

I  think  we  may  dispense  with  the  theory  that  Byron 
was  a  poseur  and  that  his  passion  was  unreal  and  rhe- 
torical. Those  lugubrious  moods  were  unfortunately  sin- 
cere. He  suffered  from  hysteria,  and  this  was  connected 
with  the  lack  of  affection  in  infancy  between  him  and 
his  mother.  He  is  the  hero  and  Mary  is  the  heroine  of 
all  his  work.  She  made  a  neurotic  out  of  him,  and  she 
is  the  cause  of  his  moods  when  he  wrote  "I  have  not 
loved  the  world,  nor  the  world  me"  in  Childe  Harold,  or 
"From  my  youth  upwards  my  spirit  walked  not  with  the 
souls  of  men,"  in  Manfred.  This  seems  strange  to  us 
who  recognise  that  faithful  love  is  often  a  pose,  and  that 
in  real  life  men  do  not,  as  a  rule,  brood  about  lost  sweet- 
hearts when  these  are  married  to  others,  and  that  they 
straightway  marry  themselves  and  smile  over  their  past 
loves,  in  whom  in  many  cases  they  could  not  again  find 
interest. 

Byron's  wife  inspired  only  two  poems, — the  bitter 
"Lines  on  Hearing  Lady  Byron  Was  111,"  and  "Fare 
Thee  Well";  she  was  also  a  model  for  two  women  in 
Don  Juan,  who  are  not  amiably  treated.  His  mistress,  the 
Countess  Guiccioli,  may  have  been  in  part  a  model  in 
Cain  for  Adah,  along  with  Mary  Chaworth,  and  she  also 
inspired  Sardanapalus. 

For  a  long  time  the  Thyrza  poems  of  18 12  puzzled 
critics.    They  were  held  to  be  addressed  to  no  one  in 


^ 


126    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

general;  there  was  a  claim  by  some  that  they  were  ad- 
dressed to  a  man,  a  friend  he  loved.  But  there  can  be 
no  doubt  that  Mary  furnished  the  chief  inspiration.  In 
ChUde  Harold,  Canto  II-9,  he  refers  to  Mary  in  the  line 
"love  and  life  together  fled,"  and  in  a  Thyrza  poem  he 
uses  the  words,  "When  love  and  life  alike  were  new." 
Mary  Chaworth  was  really  responsible  for  Byronism. 

Whether  she  ever  committed  adultery  with  him  and 
had  a  child  by  him,  as  is  claimed  by  the  author  of 
Byron,  the  Last  Phase,  one  cannot  say. 

In  his  four  early  volumes  of  poetry,published  before  he 
was  twenty-one,  there  are  many  poems  inspired  by  Mary, 
and  four  poems,  written  in  1805,  addressed  to  Caroline,  7  -^ 
who  was  undoubtedly  Mary,  are  of  especial  excellence. 
The  poems  of  his  youth  written  to  her  included  the 

)  0  —  "Fragment,"  written  after  her  marriage,  in  1805,  and 
3  (^-"Remembrance,"  written  the  year  after.     Both  of  these 
poems  were  published  after  Byron's  death.    A  pathetic 
poem.  In  the  Hours  of  Idleness  (1807),  is  "To  a  Lady"j     d  1 
"Oh,  had  my  fate  been  linked  with  thine."  "When  We  -  y  y 
Two  Parted"  was  written  the  following  year,  and  ve- 

*f  <?.— ferred  to  Mary.     In  1808  Byron  wrote  a  series  of  sad 

love  poems  to  Mary,  and  they  were  published  in  the  next 

-year,  in  1809- dn  Hobhouse's  Imitations  and  Translations. 

They  include^'^Remind  Me  Not,  Remind  Me  Not,"  "To  f  tr 

a  Lady,"  "When  Man  Expelled  from  Eden's  Bowers," 

M  p"Stanzas  to  a  Lady  on  Leaving  England,"  "Well!  Thou 
I  Art  Happy,"  "And  Wilt  Thou  Weep  WTien  I  Am  Low,"  ^^  A 
and  "There  Was  a  Time  I  Need  Not  Name.'M'^he  six  * 
great  poems  written  to  Thyrza  and  published  in  181 2, 
with  ChUde  Harold,  were  "To  Thyrza"  ("Without  a 
stone  to  mark  the  spot"),  "Away,  Away,  Ye  Notes  of 
Woe,"  "One  Struggle  More  and  I  Am  Free,"  "Euthana- 
sia," "And  Thou  Art  Dead  and  Young  and  Fair,"  and 


LITERARY  EMOTIONS  AND  NEUROSES     127 

"If  Sometimes  in  the  Haunts  of  Men."  Mary  was  as 
if  dead  to  him,  and  he  wrote  of  her  accordingly.  About 
the  time  of  the  Thyrza  poems,  181 1  and  181 2,  he  wrote 
other  poems  to  her  hke  the  "Epistle  to  a  Friend"  "I 
have  seen  my  bride  another's  bride"  and  "On  Parting 
New."  In  1813  appeared  the  two  sonnets,  "To  Genevra" 
and  "Remember  Him  Whom  Passion's  Power";  in  1814, 
^fr-^'Thou  Art  Not  False,  But  Thou  Art  Fickle,"  "Fare- 
well! If  Ever  Fondest  Prayer,"  "I  Speak  Not,  I  Trace 
Not,  I  Breathe  Not  Thy  Name."  In  181 5  appeared 
"There's  Not  a  Joy  the  World  Can  Give  That  It  Takes 
Away,"  and  181 6,  "There  Be  None  of  Beauty's  Daugh- 
ters." 

Byronism,  then,  was  due  chiefly  to  the  poet's  early 
quarrels  with  his  mother,  the  separation  from  his  wife, 
but  above  all  his  rejection  by  Mary  Chaworth. 

in 

Freud  has  told  us  that  the  idea  of  repression  is  the 
main  pillar  on  which  the  theory  of  psychoanalysis  rests. 
There  has  been  at  some  time  in  the  patient's  life  a  seri- 
ous inhibition  of  some  desire.  There  are  different  kinds 
of  repression,  the  most  serious  of  which  have  a  sexual 
basis.  But  the  denying  oneself  of  the  play  of  any 
emotions  that  seek  an  outlet,  constitutes  a  repression. 

Sex  with  Freud  means  love  in  its  broadest  sense.  The 
most  common  repression  is  the  inability  to  satisfy  one's 
love,  either  because  the  person  has  not  met  any  object 
upon  whom  to  lavish  his  affection,  or  if  such  an  individ- 
ual is  found  there  is  no  reciprocation,  or  if  the  love  is 
given  it  is  later  withdrawn.  All  these  factors  act  in 
a  repressive  manner  upon  a  person.  For  it  must  be 
understood  that  not  only  the  stinting  of  sexual  satisfac- 


128    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

tion,  but  the  interference  with  all  those  finer  emotions 
associated  with  it,  cause  a  repression  in  the  subject. 
When  Ihe  emotions  have  been  satisfied  for  a  long  time, 
and  then  there  is  a  sudden  cessation  through  change  of 
heart  or  infidelity  or  death  of  the  beloved  one,  the  re- 
pression is  very  serious.  It  is  this  kind  of  repression 
that  has  produced  most  of  the  literature  of  the  world. 

But  repression  includes  the  stinting  or  uprooting  of 
any  emotion.  Great  grief  as  the  result  of  the  death  of 
any  one  we  love  of  either  sex,  whether  friend  or  relative, 
is  a  repression.  The  death  of  a  loved  one  puts  the  suf- 
ferer in  a  worse  position  than  the  man  who  has  been 
stinted  in  a  great  love  passion.  And  the  great  elegies  in 
literature  have  been  cries  of  poets  for  the  death  of  fellow 
writers.  Lycidas,  Adonais,  In  Memoriam  and  Thyrsis 
are  examples.  The  authors  here  suffered  repressions  in 
the  loss  of  brother  poets. 

The  grief  which  seems  to  be  the  greatest  of  all,  that 
following  on  the  death  of  a  beloved  child,  is  an  instance 
of  the  most  intense  repression  on  the  part  of  a  parent. 
Here  there  is  nothing  really  sexual,  but  the  death  of  a 
child  and  the  consequent  agony  to  the  parents  is  a  far 
greater  repression  than  any  purely  sexual  one.  Hugo's 
famous  elegies  on  the  death  of  his  daughter  which  appear 
in  the  Contemplations  are  among  the  greatest  poems  of 
this  kind.  In  America  we  have  had  a  few  poems  by 
Lowell,  and  a  famous  elegy  by  Emerson,  The  Threnody, 
in  which  the  loss  of  children  is  mourned. 

If  there  were  no  repression,  there  would  be  little  lit- 
erature. 

The  varieties  of  repressions  are  as  numerous  as  the 
emotions  to  which  we  are  subject.  For  the  inability  to 
satisfy  any  emotion  is  a  repression;  the  deprivation  of 
an  emotion  long  gratified,  the  conquering  of  a  habit  or 


LITERARY  EMOTIONS  AND  NEUROSES     129 

the  struggle  for  activity  of  a  partially  extinct  emotion, 
are  repressions.  The  feeling  of  loneliness  or  homesick- 
ness, which  has  given  rise  to  much  good  literature,  shows 
repressed  emotion.  The  wish  to  v*?reak  revenge  or  to 
punish  evil  or  to  do  away  with  injustice  or  to  devote 
oneself  to  the  following  of  an  ambition  or  the  pursuit  of 
a  certain  kind  of  labour,  are  all  symptoms  of  repressions. 

IV 

Psychoanalysis  starts  with  the  assumption  that  the 
entire  past  in  a  man's  life,  beginning  with  the  first  day 
of  his  birth,  is  always  with  him  and  is  really  never  for- 
gotten. That  which  has  seemed  to  pass  out  of  the 
haunts  of  memory,  has  become  part  of  our  unconscious, 
and  is  often  revived  in  dreams.  Nothing  is  really  ever 
forgotten.  De  Quincey  understood  this  and  discourses 
on  the  subject  in  his  Confessions  of  an  Opium  Eater  and 
thus  anticipates  an  important  modern  psychological  dis- 
covery. 

Longfellow  said,  "Let  the  dead  past  bury  its  dead." 
Ah,  if  it  only  could!  Ghosts  of  sorrows  and  griefs  that 
we  thought  laid  away  still  revisit  us  even  in  our  wak- 
ing hours.  They  stalk  before  us  and  open  up  closed 
wounds  and  we  learn  that  these  are  not  yet  healed.  They 
awaken  memories  of  agonies  that  again  smite  us;  they 
make  us  hearken  back  to  unkind  words  dealt  us,  to  suf- 
fering inflicted,  to  injustice  done.  Shocks  which  time 
had  made  obtuse  are  revived;  we  reap  the  harvest  of 
anxieties  garnered  in  our  hearts;  and  we  discover  that 
the  old  despair  has  not  altogether  vanished  but  still  oc- 
casionally gnaws  us. 

The  dead  rules  the  living;  forgotten  incidents,  soul- 
wrecking  mistakes^  chance  misfortunes  still  dominate  us. 


130    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

We  recall  the  mortification  of  a  decade  or  two  ago  and 
as  its  details  are  resurrected,  we  again  live  through  the 
madness  of  past  years.  Prejudices  are  thus  built  up, 
unreasonable  indeed.  We  become  averse  to  a  face  that 
reminds  us  of  a  countenance  belonging  to  a  person  who 
troubled  us. 

The  old  poverty  still  haunts  us  in  our  present  pros- 
perity; memories  of  unpleasant  toil  in  the  past  may 
make  us  shrink  in  terror  in  our  newly  found  leisure  or 
congenial  labour.  Mark  Twain  describes  how  in  his 
prosperity  he  would  dream  that  he  had  to  return  to 
the  hated  lecture  platform  or  that  he  was  again  a  pilot 
on  the  Mississippi  River.  Past  solitude  may  still  send 
its  roots  down  to  the  present  and  leave  us  lonely  in  so- 
ciety. He  who  has  known  a  starved  body  or  many  un- 
fulfilled desires,  he  who  has  been  the  victim  of  ridi- 
cule or  persecution  or  never  before  been  encouraged  or 
sympathised  with,  remembers  the  past  only  too  well, 
even  when  the  world  honours  him  with  recognition. 

Impressions  are  strongest  in  youth  and  hence  molest 
us  in  old  age.  The  finer  our  nerves,  the  less  easy  is  it 
to  forget.  The  mother  who  has  lost  a  child  cannot 
forget  the  misfortune  even  after  other  children  are  born. 

It  is  life's  grimmest  tragedy  that  we  carry  within  us 
ghosts  of  our  old  days — ghosts  which  take  us  by  sur- 
prise with  their  vigour.  They  mock  us  at  their  will; 
we  are  tormented  unawares;  we  travel  about  with  them 
and  cannot  shake  them  off.  They  stand  beside  us  wheq 
we  love;  they  take  the  savour  out  of  our  food;  they 
dangle  at  our  footsteps  when  we  go  to  the  house  of 
mirth;  they  trail  us  in  ghastly  pursuit  long  after  we  have 
emerged  from  the  house  of  mourning.  Hence  when  the 
poet  sings  and  the  philosopher  speculates,  when  the  story- 
teller gives  us  a  tale,  unconsciously  those  old  ghosts  are 


LITERARY  EMOTIONS  AND  NEUROSES     131 

with  him  and  get  between  the  lines  of  his  writings.  An 
unseen  spirit  seems  to  move  his  pen  and  he  tells  more 
than  he  had  desired  and  he  gives  voice  to  emotions  that 
he  had  sought  to  suppress  or  regarded  as  long  since 
buried  in  a  sepulchre  that  was  impenetrable.  But  the 
dead  passions  and  tear  stained  griefs  come  gliding  forth 
and  pierce  all  barriers  and  dictate  to  him.  They  even 
wish  to  be  remembered,  to  be  made  as  enduring  in  art 
as  in  life.  They  never  weary  of  uttering  their  sen- 
timents; they  pursue  the  human  race  to  eternity. 
And  when  we  read  of  the  troubles  of  man  whether  in 
the  Bible  or  the  Iliad,  they  are  familiar  often  to  us  be- 
cause they  are  our  own.  The  author  cannot  escape  the 
past  and  he  always  opens  up  more  channels  of  his  heart 
than  he  has  suspected.  His  work  shows  that  his  old 
sorrows  rise  up  like  the  phoenix  from  its  own  ashes. 
His  ghosts  appear  in  his  art;  the  fires  that  were  thought 
smouldering  are  lighted  and  we  as  readers  are  caught  in 
the  flames  and  are  purged  in  them. 

Psychoanalysis  tries  to  rid  us  of  the  evil  influences 
of  the  past  by  making  us  aware  of  the  unconscious  dis- 
turbances. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  INFANTILE  LOVE  LIFE  OF  THE  AUTHOR  AND  ITS 
SUBLIMATIONS 


Those  who  are  familiar  with  the  theories  of  Freud 
are  aware  that  one  of  his  most  important  discoveries  is 
that  the  child  before  the  age  of  puberty  has  a  sex  or 
love  life  of  its  own.  As  he  puts  it,  it  is  absurd  to 
imagine  that  sex  enters  suddenly  at  the  age  of  puberty 
just  as  the  devils  in  the  New  Testament  were  supposed 
to  enter  the  swine.  Freud  regards  the  child's  sucking  of 
its  thumb  as  a  manifestation  of  infantile  sexuality.  In 
his  Three  Contributions  to  the  Theory  of  Sex  he 
studies  the  sexual  life  of  the  child.  This  theory  which 
met  with  much  opposition  is  beginning  to  be  accepted. 
The  studies  of  Moll,  Havelock  Ellis,  and  Helgemuth  con- 
firm Freud's  views. 

The  value  of  the  theory  is  in  this:  It  shows  that  the 
nature  of  our  later  emotional  and  especially  our  love  life 
^(  is  far  more  depen3e'nt  upon  the  nature,  aberrations,  in- 
Tiibitions,  sublirnalTons,  developments  and  transforma- 
tions of  our  infantile  sex  life,  than  we  ever  in  our  wild- 
est dreams  imagined  it  to  be.  Here  in  childhood  are 
laid  the  seeds  of  our  future  emotional  life.__  Early  re- 
pression or  seduction  or  bad  training  influences  our  later 
lives.  These  facts  are  recognised  by  many  trained  par- 
ents who  refuse  to  over-fondle  their  children  or  to  do 

jjy- _ __ 


INFANTILE  LOVE  LIFE  OF  AUTHOR       133 

anything  that  may  awaken  a  sexual  activity  too  prema- 
turely. 

Freud's  idea  is  of  value  to  the  literary  critic  for  it 
shows  that  the  characteristics  of  an  author's  work  may 
be  traced  back  to  his  infantile  sex  life.  As  a  rule  we 
know  little  about  the  lives  of  literary  men  when  they 
were  children,  but  we  can  often  judge  what  the  infan- 
tile sex  life  must  have  been  from  the  traits  appearing 
in  the  writers'  literary  performances. 

Inversion  or  homosexuality  can  be  traced  to  the  child's 
love  life.    As  infants  we  axe  bi-sexual  in  our  pre-disposi- 
tions.      Children    display    sentimental    friendships    for 
members  of  their  own  sex,  as  we  all  know.     Even  in 
later  life  in  each  sex  there  are  remnants  of  the  other 
stunted  sex,  breasts  on  the  man  and  hairy  faces  on 
women,     Freud  has  given  us  a  very  interesting  but  by 
no  means  full  explanation  of  the  origin  of  inversion.    The  ' 
abnormal  development  is  favoured  by  the  disappearance  . 
of  a  strong  father  in  early  childhood,  and  by  the  over-  \ 
attachment  to  the  mother  at  the  same  or  earlier  time.  \ 
The  love  for  the  mother  is  soon  repressed  and  the  boy_\ 
identifies  himself  with  her  and  loves  other  boys  like  _ 
himself.     He  returns  to  that  self-love  which  is  a  sec- 


ond stage  after  auto-eroticism  in  the  infant,  and  is 
known  as  narcissism.  He  wishes  to  love  those  boys  as 
his  mother  has  loved  him.  He  may  like  women  but  he 
transfers  the  excitation  evoked  by  them  to  a  male  ob- 
ject, for  they  remind  him  of  his  mother  and  he  flees  from 
them  in  order  to  be  faithful  to  her.  He  repeats  through 
life  the  mechanism  by  which  he  became  an  invert. 

The  fact  then  is  that  homosexualism  is  an  abnormal 
development  from  the  infant's  love  life.  It  is  in  the  germ 
in  all  normal  people,  especially  in  those  capable  of  in- 


134    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

tense  friendships.     It  is  naturally  abhorrent  to  us  when 
it  vents  itself  in  any  abnormal  relations. 

The  sublimated  homosexualism  which  we  find  in  lit- 
erature is  that  which  gives  way  to  outbursts  of  friendly 
devotion,  and  intense  and  passionate  grief  at  the  loss 
of  a  friend;  it  is  at  the  root  of  the  idea  that  a  man 
should  lay  his  life  down  for  his  friend.  Then  there  is 
the  real  inversion  which  the  world  rightly  stamps  as 
immoral. 

A  few  examples  of  literature  where  the  homosexualism 
of  the  author's  unconscious  is  present  are  Shakespeare's 
Sonnets,  Tennyson's  In  Memoriam  and  Whitman's  Cala- 
mus. These  works  show  what  capacities  their  authors 
had  for  friendship.  It  is  the  habit  of  some  intellectual 
homosexuals  to  try  to  interpret  these  works  as  indicative 
of  homosexual  practices,  as  an  excuse  and  consolation  to 
them  in  their  own  unfortunate  condition.  Whitman 
wrote  to  John  Addington  Symonds  in  response  to  an  en- 
quiry about  the  Calamus  poems  that  he  would  prefer 
never  to  have  written  them  if  they  gave  any  one  the  in- 
ference that  he  either  practised  or  tolerated  homosexu- 
alism. 

Two  poets  of  recent  years  who,  we  know,  practised 
homosexualism,  each  of  whom  also  served  jail  terms, 
were  Paul  Verlaine  and  Oscar  Wilde.  There  were  critics 
who  saw  that  certain  passages  in  Wilde's  novel  The  Pic- 
ture of  Dorian  Gray,  published  about  five  years  before 
he  went  to  jail,  pointed  to  the  homosexual  proclivities 
of  the  author.  His  curious  interpretation  of  Shake- 
speare's sonnets  also  shows  these.  It  is  possible  that 
some  of  the  love  poems  written  by  Verlaine  and  which 
are  supposed  to  be  addressed  to  women  were  really  writ- 
ten to  Arthur  Rimbaud,  the  poet  he  loved.     This  is  a 


INFANTILE  LOVE  LIFE  OF  AUTHOR       135 

practice  indulged  in  by  homosexual  poets  to  avoid 
suspicion. 

The  classic  stories  of  ideal  friendship  are  those  of 
David  and  Jonathan,  and  Damon  and  Pythias;  the  most 
widely  known  essays  in  ancient  literature  discussing 
homosexual  love  as  a  legitimate  pursuit  are  in  the  dia- 
logues on  love  by  Plutarch  and  by  Plato.  Theocritus 
and  the  Greek  Anthology  authors  refer  to  homosexual 
love. 

The  only  interest  the  subject  has  for  the  psychoana- 
lytic critic  of  literature  is  in  tracing  the  connection  be- 
tween the  works  of  authors  where  homosexual  remnants 
in  the  form  of  extreme  friendships  are  present  and  their 
infantile  sex  life. 

Freud's  monograph  on  Leonardo  da  Vinci  is  the  best 
study  we  have  of  a  homosexual  artist. 

It  appears  then  that  the  bisexual  tendency  which  is 
in  infancy  in  all  of  us,  in  later  life  may  lead,  where 
it  does  not  become  absolutely  normal,  to  actual  homo- 
sexuality, or  to  a  sublimation  of  this  early  inverse  tend- 
ency; one  of  the  manifestations  of  this  sublimation  be- 
ing literary  products  in  which  friendship  is  exalted. 

n 

There  are  other  perverts  whose  vices  in  later  life  can  [ 
be  traced  to  the  infantile  sex  life.  These  are  sadists, 
masochists,  exhibitionists  and  voyeurs.  The  child's  sex 
life  takes  place  through  the  pleasures  which  it  creates 
for  itself  in  the  erogenous  zones,  which  are  sensitive  areas 
in  any  part  of  the  body.  It  gratifies  itself  mainly  on 
its  own  body;  it  is  autoerotic.  But  the  sexual  life  soon 
derives  pleasure  through  other  persons  as  sexual  objects. 
There  are  also  components  or  partial  impulses,  which 


136     THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

are:  for  causing  cruelty  to  others  (sadistic),  for  deriv- 
ing pleasure  from  pain  to  itself  (masochistic),  for  show- 
ing itself  shamelessly  (exhibitionistic),  and  for  peeping 
at  others  in  nude  state  (the  voyeur's  instinct).  As  a 
rule  these  impulses  are  sublimated  very  early,  but  if  they 
persist  the  perversions  govern  the  individuals  for  the  rest 
of  their  lives.  Where  they  are  sublimated  we  have  as 
a  result  some  of  the  most  essential  features  of  our  mod- 
ern cultural  institutions. 

The  child  who  continued  shameless  for  a  few  years 
may  become  very  vain,  and  as  an  author  write  indecent 
literature.  The  child  who  was  cruel  may  later  in  life 
love  contests  and  competitions,  and  write  books  where 
cruel  scenes  or  virulent  abuse  of  people  abound.  The 
infant  who  derived  pleasure  from  pain  inflicted  on  it  may 
be  interested  in  solving  intricate  problems  that  as  a 
man  annoy  him  with  a  demand  for  solution,  and  he 
will  torture  himself  in  solving  them.  He  also  may  be 
a  conformist  and  find  pleasure  in  crucifying  himself 
upon  the  rack  of  the  church  and  the  state  and  the  home; 
or  become  a  martyr  for  an  idea.  As  a  writer  he  would 
depict  martyrs  or  indulge  in  self-commiseration. 

Literature  shows  sublimations  of  these  impulses  and 
also  gives  evidences  of  the  authors'  perverse  tendencies 
where  these  impulses  have  not  been  sublimated;  they 
may  contrive  to  exist  or  be  buried  in  the  unconscious. 

There  are  many  literary  men  who  have  been  per- 
verse in  their  tendencies  in  later  life  without  knowing 
it.  Often  the  man  who  merely  thinks  he  is  fighting 
Puritanism  in  art  when  he  shows  a  tendency  to  describe 
the  nude  only,  or  to  describe  people  in  compromising 
positions,  is  both  an  exhibitionist  and  voyeur.  These 
impulses  have  been  suppressed  in  him  by  civilisation  and 
he  finds  an  outlet  for  his  unconscious  by  his  art.    Such 


INFANTILE  LOVE  LIFE  OF  AUTHOR       137 

literature  is  not  so  much  immoral  as  indecent.  A  lit- 
erary man  may  become  an  exhibitionist  in  his  work  so 
as  to  give  play  to  an  impulse  he  cannot  otherwise  gratify. 
A  writer  may  write  exhibitionistic  books  for  money  of 
to  attract  attention  or  for  fun,  but  his  work  shows  that 
psychologically  he  has  never  completely  suppressed  the 
exhibitionistic  or  peeping  tendencies  of  his  childhood. 
Like  the  child  he  is  without  shame.  The  feature  of 
the  cheap  and  lascivious  literature  that  is  written  merely 
to  pander  to  certain  tastes  is  just  in  these  traits. 

But  the  traits  of  the  exhibitionist  and  voyeur  are  found 
more  or  less  in  much  of  the  good  literature  of  the  world. 
In  the  cases  of  works,  however,  like  the  Arabian  Nights, 
Rabelais,  Chaucer,  the  novels  of  Sterne,  Fielding  and 
many  others  where  great  genius,  intellect  and  honesty  are 
displayed,  the  liberal  minded  critic  is  willing  to  smile 
and  pass  over  these  exhibitionistic  blemishes.  In  the  cases 
of  the  older  works  these  are  due  to  the  general  looseness 
in  speech  of  the  times. 

The  application  of  psychoanalytic  methods  puts  then 
in  a  new  light  much  of  the  so-called  immoral  literature. 
In  much  of  the  indecent  comic  literature,  like  the  Res- 
toration dramatists,  Balzac's  Droll  Tales,  Boccaccio's 
Decameron  and  La  Fontaine's  Tales,  the  object  is  to 
arouse  laughter  by  making  a  person  accidentally  exhibit 
himself.  The  author  stiil  finds  an  outlet  for  his  repressed 
exhibitionism.  There  is  a  distinction  between  this  litera- 
ture and  the  "immoral"  literature  of  a  writer  like  Ibsen, 
who  merely  differs  with  the  current  morality  and  ques- 
tions it,  and  who  therefore  seems  immoral  to  the  con- 
ventional man. 

Again  there  is  a  distinction  between  exhibitionism  in 
literature  and  real  immoral  literature,  where  an  author 


138     THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

tries,  for  example,  to  defend  sexual  crimes  like  rape  or 
seduction. 

Exhibitionism  then  as  we  find  it  in  literary  men 
points  to  infantile  practices  that  were  never  completely- 
suppressed  and  are  finding  an  outlet.  It  is  true,  other 
motives  may  enter  into  the  work.  There  may  be  a 
disgust  on  the  part  of  the  writer  at  his  fellowmen's  hypo- 
critical and  prudish  standards  of  modesty  and  shame, 
and  he  may  write  to  counteract  these.  But  the  exhibi- 
tionism of  writers  like  Apuleius,  Petronius,  Gautier  or 
Zola  does  not  interfere,  nay,  sometimes  enhances  the  ar- 
tistic value  of  their  works. 

Another  form  of  sublimation  of  exhibitionistic  traits 
leads  to  works  in  which  the  author  is  always  boasting 
or  showing  off,  directly  or  indirectly.  Sometimes  the 
sublimation  process  is  not  complete  and  we  have  ex- 
amples of  the  exhibitionistic  traits  alongside  of  the  ego- 
tism. The  reader  will  at  once  think  of  Montaigne's 
Essays  and  Rousseau's  Confessions,  two  of  the  greatest 
works  in  the  world's  literature.  Among  ancients  two  of 
the  vainest  men  were  Cicero  and  Caesar,  whose  writings 
show  that  exhibitionistic  traits  of  their  infancy  were 
strong. 

We  here  may  consider  the  effects  of  infantile  sexual 
investigation.  Freud  says  its  activity  labours  with  the 
desire  for  looking,  though  it  cannot  be  added  to  the 
elementary  components  of  the  impulses.  Many  readers 
may  refuse  to  follow  Freud  here,  where  he  concludes 
that  the  great  desire  for  knowledge  in  later  life  may 
be  traced  to  this  infantile  sexual  curiosity.  But  that 
there  must  be  some  connection  cannot  be  doubted.  A 
child  who  has  never  displayed  any  curiosity  as  to  v/here 
it  came  from  must  be  one  in  whom  the  desire  for  knowl- 
edge has  not  been  and  probably  never  will  be  strongly  de- 


INFANTILE  LOVE  LIFE  OF  AUTHOR       139 

veloped.  The  child  is  the  father  of  the  student  man, 
Freud  asserts  in  his  study  of  Leonardo  da  Vinci  that 
there  are  three  sublimations  in  later  life  of  this  curi- 
osity, the  most  important  and  rarest  being  where  a  pure 
scientific  investigation  replaces  the  sexual  activity  and  is 
not  occupied  with  sexual  themes.  Thus  he  explains  the 
scientific  work  of  Leonardo  and  his  chaste  life. 


in 

Let  us  now  take  up  the  other  two  partial  impulses, 
sadism  and  masochism,  noted  by  Freud,  and  see  their 
effect  on  the  literary  work  of  a  man  in  later  life. 

"The  repression  of  the  sadistic  impulse,"  says  Dr. 
Brink,  "produces  not  its  annihilation  but  merely  its 
transfer  from  consciousness  to  unconsciousness.  And 
there,  withheld  from  the  neutralising  influence  of  con- 
scious reasoning,  the  impulse  and  the  phantasies  derived 
from  it  are  not  only  preserved  without  deterioration  but 
may  even  grow  in  vigour  and  intensity.  Thus,  despite 
the  fact  that  in  many  instances  the  individual's  conscious 
life  is  apparently  singularly  irreproachable,  nevertheless 
this  life  is  lived  coincidently  with  an  undercurrent  of 
impulses  of  anger,  hate,  hostility  and  revenge  and  their 
corresponding  phantasies"  {Morbid  Fears,  page  291). 

This  would  account  for  the  tales  of  horror  we  find  in 
Poe,  Kipling  and  Jack  London.  To-day  we  do  not  al- 
ways assault  or  kill  our  enemies.  Literary  men  do  so 
by  depicting  scenes  in  literature  where  this  is  done.  Jack 
London  describes  fist  fights  in  which  he  is  always  de- 
feating his  enemies.  It  is  said  that  in  real  life  he  boasted 
of  his  abilities  as  a  fighter. 

Pfister,  in  his  Psychoanalytic  Method,  formulates  a 
law  from  an  earlier  work  of  his,  as  follows:  "The  re- 


140    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

pressed  hate  of  certain  individuals  forms  phantasies  out 
of  suitable  contents  of  experiences,  either  actual  or  imag- 
inary, according  to  the  laws  of  the  dream-work,  by  which 
procedure  it  creates  for  itself  imaginary  gratification. 
This  gratification  of  complex  comes  about  through  the 
mechanism  of  a  disguised  wish,  directed  towards  the  in- 
jury of  the  hated  person,  being  represented  in  the  con- 
tent of  the  waking  dream  as  realised." 

This  explains  the  literature  of  hatred  and  how  authors 
come  to  put  their  enemies  in  books  and  poems.  Such 
works  are  traceable  to  the  sex  sadistic  instincts  of  child- 
hood. We  find  sadism  in  books  reeking  with  curses. 
Ovid's  Ibis,  directed  against  the  person  who  was  to  blame 
for  his  exile,  is  a  good  example;  it  is  one  of  the  most  bit- 
ter invectives  in  literature.  We  also  understand  now  the 
significance  of  the  imaginary  punishments  inflicted  by  an 
author  upon  his  enemies.  The  severe  chastisement  in- 
flicted by  Dante  in  his  Inferno  upon  his  enemies  repre- 
sents the  poet's  wishes  carried  out  in  his  imagination  to 
gratify  him  for  his  inability  to  fulfil  his  repressed  hatred. 

Literature  abounds  in  hostile  and  satirical  portrayals 
of  the  author's  enemies.  In  ancient  Greece  we  have 
many  examples,  the  best  known  probably  being  the  cari- 
cature of  Socrates  by  Aristophanes,  in  the  Clouds. 

Elizabethan  literature,  especially  the  drama,  gives  us 
portrayals  of  fellow  authors.  Ben  Jonson  attacked  the 
dramatists  Marston  and  Decker  in  The  Poetaster  (1601), 
and  they  retaliated  in  Satiromastix.  The  most  familiar 
example  in  English  literature  of  an  abuse  of  enemies  is 
Pope's  Dunciad.  Then  we  have  Byron's  poem  "The 
Sketch"  directed  at  the  maid  he  considered  responsible 
for  his  wife's  desertion  of  him,  and  Shelley's  bitter 
diatribe  "To  the  Lord  Chancellor"  against  Lord  Eldon, 
whose  decree  deprived   the  poet  of  his  two  children. 


INFANTILE  LOVE  LIFE  OF  AUTHOR       141 

Richard  Savage's  poem  "The  Bastard"  against  his  alleged 
mother  for  neglecting  him,  her  illegitimate  son,  is  not 
as  well  known  as  it  used  to  be.  An  author  v^ho  was 
past  master  at  the  art  of  lampooning  his  enemies  was 
Heine,  and  his  attacks  on  Count  Platen  in  the  Pictures 
of  Travel  are  among  the  most  bitter  in  literature.  All 
these  attacks  follow  one  principle;  the  author  finds  an 
outlet  of  his  repressed  hatred,  and  the  desire  for  venge- 
ance not  being  always  possible  in  a  physical  sense,  in 
modern  times  gives  rise  to  phantasies  of  vindictiveness. 
The  sadistic  impulses  of  childhood  are  the  sources  of  such 
literary  works. 

Take  the  portrayal  of  Thersites  in  the  second  book  of 
the  Iliad.  This  notorious  character  was  surely  some  real 
person  whom  the  author  knew  and  despised  and  on 
whom  he  wreaked  vengeance  by  drawing  him.  He  was 
some  man  of  Homer's  own  time,  centuries  after  the 
Trojan  War,  and  his  type  is  as  common  to-day  as  it 
was  in  the  days  of  Homer.  The  poet  no  doubt  felt 
a  grievance  against  some  prattler  and  nonentity  he  knew, 
and  pilloried  the  man  for  posterity;  the  personal  note 
appears  throughout  the  whole  passage.  Thersites  is 
described  as  ill-favoured  beyond  all  men,  bandy-legged, 
lame,  round-shouldered,  largely  bald.  He  tries  to  re- 
buke his  betters,  and  Odysseus  admonishes  him  severely, 
calling  him  most  base  of  the  Greeks,  telling  him  not  to 
have  the  names  of  kings  in  his  mouth  and  threatening 
to  strip  and  beat  him.  Thersites  received  a  welt  on  the 
back  and  sat  down,  crying.  Then  notice  how  Homer  puts 
his  j>ersonal  feelings  still  more  into  the  mouth  of  the  Greek 
who  laughed  and  said  that  Odysseus  had  done  many 
great  deeds  but  this  is  the  best  he  had  done  in  that  he 
had  stayed  this  prating  railer.  Homer  thus  punished  some 
man  he  did  not  like.    It  is  rather  odd  that  those  who 


142    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

maintain  the  theory  of  the  impersonality  of  the  epic 
poem  do  not  apply  a  Httle  knowledge  of  human  nature 
in  studying  literature,  as  this  is  often  of  more  value 
than  scholarship. 

Lists  may  be  compiled  of  nineteenth  century  novels, 
where  the  authors  drew  as  villains  their  enemies.  Often 
these  are  fellow  authors.  Dostoievsky  put  Turgenev 
into  The  Possessed  in  an  unamiable  light,  under  the 
character  Karmazinoff.  George  Sand  introduced  lovers 
of  hers  with  whom  she  had  parted  in  her  novels,  and 
Chopin  and  De  Musset  have  been  drawn  by  her  for 
us.  Balzac  righted  his  grievance  against  his  critic  Jules 
Janin  by  putting  him  in  the  Young  Provincial  in  Paris. 
The  motive  of  vengeance  figures  considerably  in  litera- 
ture, though  at  times  a  malevolent  mischievous  instinct 
drives  the  author  on,  as  when  Dickens  drew  Leigh  Hunt 
under  the  character  of  Harold  Skimpole  in  Bleak  House. 
Sadistic  instincts  are  of  course  primitive,  and  where  in 
ancient  times  a  man  might  have  put  his  enemy  out  of 
existence,  to-day  he  can  kill  him  only  in  imagination. 
The  man  does  not  have  to  be  a  personal  enemy,  but  may 
be  some  character  in  real  life  who  represents  an  idea  or 
follows  a  course  of  conduct  that  the  author  thinks  repre- 
hensible. Demosthenes,  Cicero,  Milton,  Swift  and  the 
author  of  the  Junius  letters  knew  how  to  castigate  their 
enemies.  Hugo's  attacks  on  Napoleon  in  his  Chatiments 
and  Napoleon  the  Little  are  among  the  most  bitter  in 
literature. 

An  excellent  analysis  of  hatred  is  found  in  Hazlitt's 
Pleasure  of  Hating,  where  he  shows  hatred  is  a  real  in- 
stinct and  needs  satisfaction — it  is  a  remnant  of  sav- 
age days.  Hazlitt's  attack  on  Gifford  presents  many 
opportunities  for  the  study  of  the  psychology  of  hatred. 

There  are  other  cases  of  sublimated  sadism  in  prac- 


INFANTILE  LOVE  LIFE  OF  AUTHOR       143 

tically  all  literature  where  pain  is  described.  The 
author  displays  a  craving  to  see  people  suffer  even 
where  he  sympathises  with  them  and  he  satisfies  that 
craving  by  drawing  them  in  their  agonies.  Take  Flau- 
bert's keen  interest  in  describing  the  torture  and  suf- 
ferings physically  inflicted  on  Salammbo's  lover  Matho, 
There  is  hardly  anything  more  sadistic  in  literature  than 
the  conclusion  of  Salammbo. 

Sadism  is  often  sublimated  into  interest  in  contests. 
One  of  the  most  ancient  examples  we  have  of  such  sub- 
limation is  in  Pindar's  Odes,  where  contests  in  Greek 
games  are  described  and  the  victors  praised.  We  have 
sadism,  in  fact,  in  all  tales  of  competition  where  some 
one  is  vanquished. 

The  sadistic  trait  is  the  source  of  the  glee  with  which 
people  watch  some  one  in  a  moving  picture  being  beaten 
or  hurt.  It  is  the  cause  of  the  pleasure  and  interest  we 
find  in  reading  of  executions,  battles  and  physical  suf- 
fering. There  is  nothing  strange  in  tracing  all  this  to  the 
delight  we  had  as  children  in  torturing  animals.  This  is 
a  partial  sexual  impulse  and  is  sublimated  in  most  of 
us  in  later  life  and  finds  expression  in  our  literature. 

It  is  held  that  masochism  is  usually  found  side  by 
side  with  sadism.  Literature  is  also  rich  in  sublimated 
masochism.  Many  authors  are  apparently  only  happy 
in  their  woe.  They  find  delight  in  torturing  themselves 
and  in  recounting  their  sufferings.  Many  of  them  were 
not  as  unhappy  as  they  persuaded  us  to  believe.  The 
whole  school  of  woe  that  had  its  origin  in  Rousseau  and 
that  was  prominent  in  the  early  decades  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  was  full  of  sublimated  masochism. 
Hence  it  has  been  called  insincere.  Byron  and  Cha- 
teaubriand were  regarded,  though  not  justly,  as  affect- 
ing woes  they  never  really  felt.    Some  of  the  sonneteers 


144    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

who  imitated  the  Italians  before  and  even  during  the 
Elizabethan  period  wrote  about  woes  they  never  felt. 
This  is,  however,  not  the  usual  thing,  and  the  greatest 
Elizabethan  sonneteers  like  Shakespeare,  Spenser  and 
Sidney  described  real  troubles. 

Another  phase  of  sublimated  masochism  is  the  at- 
tempt to  torture  one's  self  to  solve  puzzles  and  prob- 
lems, and  vex  one's  self  more  for  the  sheer  delight  in 
unravelling  difficult  situations  than  for  the  pursuit  of 
knowledge.  Note  how  children  like  to  solve  puzzles 
in  newspapers.  Poe,  who  had  the  sadistic  instinct  in 
sublimation,  also  had  the  masochistic  impulse.  We  are 
familiar  with  his  interest  in  reading  cryptograms  and 
with  his  paper  on  the  subject.  We  remember  his  essays 
on  studying  persons'  characters  from  their  autographs. 
His  stories  of  ratiocination  like  the  Gold  Bug,  the  Mur- 
der in  the  Rue  Morgue,  the  Purloined  Letter  are  ex- 
amples of  sublimated  masochism.  His  Dupin,  the  de- 
tective, is  an  example  of  a  man  who  likes  to  annoy 
himself.  Sherlock  Holmes  is  the  best  known  modern 
example.  Indeed  the  interest  in  tales  of  mystery  and 
detective  stories  shows  the  power  of  the  masochistic  in- 
^^inct  in  human  nature.  •-' 

Still  another  example  of  sublimated  masochism  is 
found  in  stories  and  plays  where  the  idea  of  self  sacri- 
fice and  penance  figures.  Dante's  Purgatorio  is  a  good 
illustration  of  the  author's  masochistic  tendencies  as  the 
Inferno  is  of  his  sadism.  He  who  tortures  himself 
whether  to  follow  the  laws  of  society  or  to  fight  them 
is  masochistic.  Hence  the  tales  of  martyrs  and  heroes 
and  idealists  all  betray  the  sublimated  masochistic  im- 
pulse. Both  the  rebel  and  the  conformist,  because  they 
embrace  torture,  one  might  say  almost  willingly  (though 
they  really  cannot  help  it),  are  masochistic.    All  litera- 


INFANTILE  LOVE  LIFE  OF  AUTHOR       145 

ture  describing  these  types  show  that  the  author  has  a 
keen  interest  in  this  satisfaction  in  one's  suffering,  and 
are  the  results,  if  Freud  is  right,  of  the  author's  infantile 
delight  to  suffer,  which  became  later  sublimated. 

Rousseau  describes  the  pleasure  he  received  from 
beatings,  and  this  masochism  is  seen  in  his  Confessions, 
where  he  tells  us  of  his  woes  with  apparent  enjoyment 
in  them. 

All  this  is  significant.  Freud  says:  "Children  who 
are  distinguished  for  evincing  special  cruelty  to  animals 
and  playmates  may  justly  be  suspected  of  intensive  and 
premature  sexual  activity  in  the  erogenous  zones;  and 
in  a  simultaneous  prematurity  of  all  sexual  impulses, 
the  erogenous  sexual  activity  surely  seems  to  be  primary. 
The  absence  of  the  barrier  of  sympathy  carries  with  it 
the  danger  that  the  connections  between  cruelty  atid 
erogenous  impulses  formed  in  childhood  cannot  be  broken 
in  later  life."   (  Three  Contributions— Vage  54.) 

There  is  then  a  connection  between  the  sadism  and 
masochism  of  early  infancy  which  is  related  to  sex,  and 
the  sublimations  in  art  of  those  impulses.  People  who 
can  hate  fiercely  or  are  vindictive  or  have  a  tendency 
towards  cruelty  or  who  like  to  torture  themselves  are 
as  a  rule  of  strong  sex  impulses. 

IV 

There  are  other  phases  of  infantile  sexual  life  that 
rule  a  person  for  life.  One  of  these  is  that  stage  be- 
tween the  first  period  of  the  child's  first  sex  life  known 
as  autoeroticism  when  it  finds  pleasure  from  its  own 
body,  and  the  period  when  it  selects  an  object  to  love 
apart  from  itself.  This  stage  is  called  narcissism  be- 
cause then  the  child  loves  itself.     Many  people  never 


146    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

grow  out  of  this;  we  are  all  more  or  less  narcisstic. 
This  narcissism  is  the  basis  of  egoism  in  literature  and 
is  no  doubt  related  to  extreme  individualism.  Stirner, 
Nietzsche,  and  Stendhal,  who  rank  intellectually  among 
the  greatest  writers  the  world  has  had,  are  largely  nar- 
cisstic. 

Walt  Whitman  would  form  a  good  subject  for  study 
of  the  manner  in  which  infantile  narcisstic  sex  life 
is  sublimated  in  later  life  into  individualism. 

The  following  are  passages  from  the  Song  of  Myself, 
showing  that  the  narcisstic  infantile  life  of  Whitman 
was  sublimated  into  good  poetry  and  philosophy: 

"While  they  discuss  I  am   silent,  and  go  bathe  and  admire 

myself. 
Welcome  is  every  organ  and  attribute  of  me,  and  of  any  man 

hearty  and  clean, 
Not  an  inch  nor  a  particle  of  an  inch  is  vile,  and  none  shall 

be  less  familiar  than  the  rest  .  .  . 
Having  pried  through  the  strata,  analysed  to  a  hair,  counsel'd 

with  doctors  and  calculated  close, 
I  find  no  sweeter  fat  than  sticks  to  my  own  bones.  .  .  . 
Divine  am   I,   inside  and  out,  and   I   make  holy   whatever  I 

touch  or  am  touch'd  from, 
The  scent  of  these  arm-pits  aroma  finer  than  prayer, 
The  head  more  than  churches,  bibles  and  all  creeds. 
If   I   worship   one   thing   more   than   another   it   shall   be   the 

spread  of  my  body,   or  any  part  of   it, 
Translucent  mould  of  me  it  shall  be  you!  .  .  . 
I  dote  on  myself,  there  is  that  lot  of  me  and  all  so  luscious." 

His  early  narcissism  did  not  lead  him  into  selfishness 
but  taught  him  self-respect. 

He  says  in  the  Song  of  Myself: 

"I  am  an  acme  of  things  accom.plished  and  an  encloser  of 

things  to  be.  .  .  . 
I  chant  the  chant  of  dilation  or  pride; 
We  have  had  ducking  and  deprecating  about  enough.  .  .  ." 


INFANTILE  LOVE  LIFE  OF  AUTHOR       147 

In  From  Blue  Ontario's  Shore,  he  writes: 

"It  is  not  the  earth,  it  is  not  America  who  is  so  great, 

It  is  I  who  am  great  or  to  be  great,  it  is  you  up  there  or  any 

one.  .  .  . 
Underneath  all,  individuals, 

I  swear  nothing  is  good  to  me  now  that  ignores  individuals. 
The  whole  theory  of  the  universe  is   directed  unerringly  to 

one  single  individual — namely  to  You.  .  .  . 
I  will  confront  these  shows   of  the   day  and   night, 
I  will  know  if  I  am  to  be  less  than  they.  .  .  . 
I  will  see  if  I  have  no  meaning,  while  the  houses  and  ships 

have  meaning." 

The  following  lines  from  /  Sing  the  Body  Electric  is 
another  example: 

"O  my  body !  I  dare  not  desert  the  likes  of  you  in  other  men 
and  women,  nor  the  likes  of  the  parts  of  you ; 

I  believe  the  likes  of  you  are  to  stand  or  fall  with  the  likes 
of  the  soul  and  that  they  are  the  soul. 

I  believe  the  likes  of  j'ou  shall  stand  or  fall  with  my  poems, 
and  that  they  are  my  poems.  .  .  ." 

Where  Whitman  shows  sublimations  of  these  infantile 
phases  he  deduces  important  and  profound  views  of  life 
to  make  us  happier.  He  questions  whether  the  giving 
up  of  some  of  the  heritages  we  surrendered  to  cultural 
demands  has  not  made  us  also  part  with  some  valuable 
emotions  and  whether  we  have  not  denied  ourselves 
rights  we  ought  to  resume.  He  makes  egoism  respect- 
able, and  deduces  individualism  from  it. 


I  also  wish  to  mention  that  sexual  aberration,  in  which 
an  object  unfit  for  the  sexual  aim  is  substituted  for  the 
normal  one,  and  is  known  as  fetichism.  We  need  not 
go  into  the  causes  of  it,  but  psychoanalysis  has  shown 


148    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

that  smell  plays  a  part.  We  often  find  poets  celebrating 
the  eyebrows,  the  gloves,  and  other  objects  connected 
with  the  women  they  love.  Though  a  certain  amount 
of  fetichism  is  normal  in  love,  literature  gives  us  in- 
stances where  it  amounts  to  an  aberrated  passion  in  the 
author.  There  is  much  fetichism  in  Gautier's  stories, 
where  he  dwells  on  the  fetichistic  characteristics  of  his 
heroes  in  whom  he  describes  himself.  Then  those  poems 
where  the  sparrows  and  dogs  of  the  beloved  are  described 
as  if  the  author  were  in  love  with  them  because  of  their 
associations,  those  tales  where  too  much  attention  is 
given  to  the  dress  of  the  heroines,  all  have  fetichistic 
traces, 

A  phase  of  sex  life  in  the  child  that  is  significant  for 
the  future  is  the  sublimation  that  occurs  in  the  sexual 
latency  period  between  the  third  and  fifth  year,  when 
the  sentiments  of  shame,  loathing  and  morality  appear. 
These  are  reaction  formations  to  the  perverse  tendencies 
of  infancy.  They  are  brought  about  at  the  cost  of  the 
infantile  sexuality  itself.  These  sublimations  take  place 
in  the  beginning  in  this  latency  period,  and  if  they  do 
not  occur  there  is  an  abnormal  development  and  the  re- 
sult is  the  latter  perversions  of  life.  When  we  say  a 
man  has  no  moral  sense,  we  mean  not  only  that  he 
does  not  know  the  difference  between  right  and  wrong 
but  that  he  is  not  disgusted  or  shamed  at  sexual  con- 
duct that  is  held  in  abhorrence  by  most  people.  Hence 
those  authors  who  have  this  indifference  to  perverse 
moral  conduct  in  their  work,  never  as  children  in  the 
latency  period  developed  shame  or  disgust.  All  this  is 
again  evidence  of  the  influence  of  the  sublimations  in 
childhood  upon  later  literary  work  and  view  points. 
Girls  as  a  rule  develop  this  sense  of  morality  earlier 
than  boys,  and  this  no  doubt  accounts  to  some  extent 


INFANTILE  LOVE  LIFE  OF  AUTHOR       149 

for  the  prudishness  of  most  women  writers.  The  de- 
velopment is  greater  and  we  therefore  find  no  women 
Rabelais  in  literature. 

It  is  no  exaggeration  then  to  say  that  the  infantile 
sex  life  governs  the  psychology  of  the  future  writer  and 
the  nature  and  tendency  of  his  work. 


CHAPTER  XI 

SEXUAL   SYMBOLISM   IN   LITERATURE 


The  repression  of  the  libido  includes  the  damming 
and  clogging  up  of  all  the  emotional  concomitants  that 
go  with  sexual  attraction  and  make  up  the  feeling  called 
love.  Whenever  then  sex  or  libido  is  referred  to  in 
psychoanalysis  the  word  has  the  widest  meaning.  The 
man  who  loves  a  woman  with  the  greatest  affection  and 
passion,  without  gratifying  these,  suffers  a  repression  of 
the  libido,  as  well  as  the  man  who  satisfies  certain  pro- 
clivities without  feeling  any  tenderness  or  love  for  the 
woman.  In  the  emotion  felt  towards  the  other  sex  called 
love,  in  which  admiration,  respect,  self-sacrifice,  tender- 
ness and  other  finer  feelings  play  a  great  part,  there  is 
consciously  or  unconsciously,  however,  the  physical  at- 
traction. If  this  is  totally  absent  the  emotion  cannot  be 
called  "love."  What  differentiates  our  feelings  towards 
one  of  the  opposite  sex  from  those  felt  for  one  of  the 
same  sex  (assuming  there  are  no  homosexual  leanings) 
is  the  presence  of  this  sexual  interest.  Love  then  must 
satisfy  a  man  physically  as  well  as  psychically.  It  is  a 
concentration  of  the  libido  upon  a  person  of  the  opposite 
sex,  accompanied  by  tender  feelings. 

Hence  when  we  read  the  most  chaste  love  poem,  we 
see  what  is  the  underlying  motive  in  the  poet's  uncon- 

150 


SEXUAL  SY^IBOLISM  151 

scious.  He  may  write  with  utter  devotion  to  the  loved 
one  and  express  a  wish  to  die  for  her,  and  though  he  says 
nothing  about  physical  attraction,  we  all  know  that  it  is 
there  in  his  unconscious.  It  is  taken  for  granted  that 
a  man  who  writes  a  real  love  poem  to  a  girl  wants  to 
enjoy  her  love.  And  when  the  poet  complains  because 
he  is  rejected  or  deceived,  or  of  something  interfering 
with  the  course  of  his  love,  we  are  aware  also  that  his 
unconscious  is  grieved  because  his  union  is  impeded  or 
entirely  precluded.  The  suffering  is  greater  the  more 
he  loves,  for  his  finer  instincts,  as  well  as  his  passion, 
are  prevented  from  being  fulfilled. 

Let  us  take  at  random  a  few  innocent  poems  and  test 
the  theory.  There  is  Ben  Jonson's  well  known  toast, 
"Drink  to  me  only  with  thine  eyes."  He  tells  how  he 
sent  Celia  a  rose  wreath,  that  she  breathed  on  it  and 
sent  it  back  to  him. 


"Since  when  it  grows,  and  smells,  I  swear. 
Not  of  itself  but  thee." 

Odour  is  an  important  feature,  it  is  well  known,  in  sexual 
attraction.  In  this  poem  the  poet,  after  having  received 
the  returned  rose  breathed  upon  by  Celia,  smells  her 
perfume,  which  now  submerges  the  natural  fragrance 
of  the  rose.  In  other  words  the  poet's  unconscious  says 
that  he  wishes  to  possess  Celia  physically.  He  is  talk- 
ing symbolically  in  the  poem. 

There  is  the  song  in  Tennyson's  "The  Miller's  Daugh- 
ter," beginning  "It  is  the  miller's  daughter."  The  poet 
says  naively  enough  that  he  would  like  to  be  the  jewel 
in  her  ear  in  order  to  touch  her  neck,  the  girdle  about 
her  waist  ("I'd  clasp  it  round  so  close  and  tight"), 
and  the  necklace  upon  her  balmy  bosom  to  fall  and  rise; 


152     THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

"I  would  lie  so  light,  so  light."  The  unconscious  sex- 
ual feelings  here  are  only  too  apparent.  The  symbols 
of  the  earring,  girdle  and  necklace  are  unmistakable. 
The  poet  is  saying  in  a  symbolical  manner  that  he  would 
possess  the  miller's  daughter. 

Moreover  one  may  see  the  sex  motive  in  poems  where 
it  does  not  seem  to  appear.  If  certain  facts  in  an  au- 
thor's life  are  known,  we  may  discern  the  unconscious 
love  sentiments  in  poems  where  no  mention  seems  to  be 
made  of  them.  Let  me  illustrate  with  a  fine  poem  by 
Longfellow,  the  familiar  "The  Bridge."    Take  the  lines 

"How  often,  O  how  often, 
I   had   wished  that  the  ebbing  tide 
Would  bear  me  away  in  its  bosom 
O'er  the  ocean  wild  and  wide! 

"For  my  heart  was  hot  and  restless. 
And  m.y  life  was  full  of  care, 
And  the  burden   laid  upon  me 
Seemed  greater  than  I  could  bear. 

"But  now  it  has  fallen  from  me,  etc." 

To  the  student  of  Longfellow,  this  poem  speaks  of  the 
time  he  found  it  difficult  to  win  the  love  of  his  second 
wife,  Frances  Appleton,  love  for  whom  he  confessed  in 
his  novel  Hyperion,  where  he  drew  her  and  himself. 
This  story  was  published  before  she  had  as  yet  recipro- 
cated his  love.  He  married  her  July  13,  1843.  He  fin- 
ished the  poem  October  9,  1845.  -^t  the  end  of  this  year 
he  wrote  in  his  diary  that  now  he  had  love  fulfilled  and 
his  soul  was  enriched  with  affection.  He  is  therefore 
thinking  of  the  time  when  he  had  no  love  and  longed 
for  it,  and  now  that  he  has  it,  he  is  thinking  of  the 
love  troubles  of  others.  In  the  olden  days  he  wanted  to 
be  carried  away  by  the  river  Charles,  for  his  long  court- 
ship, seemingly  hopeless,  made  his  heart  hot  and  rest- 


SEXUAL  SYMBOLISM  153 

less  and  his  life  full  of  care.  So  we  see  that  in  this 
poem  the  poet  was  thinking  of  something  definite,  relat- 
ing to  love  (and  hence  also  sex),  though  there  is  no 
mention  of  either  in  the  poem. 

It  is  well  known  that  all  love  complaints  are  the  cries 
of  the  Jack  who  cannot  get  his  Jill;  or  who  has  lost 
the  possibility  of  love  happiness  by  desertion,  decep- 
tion or  death. 

Read  that  fine  and  pathetic  Scotch  ballad,  beginning 
"O  waly,  waly  up  the  bank."  The  girl  (or  woman) 
has  been  forsaken  by  her  lover  and  expects  to  become 
a  mother.  She  longs  for  death.  She  complains  about 
the  cruelty  of  love  grown  cold;  she  recalls  the  happy 
days.  Her  unconscious  sentiment  is  that  her  lover  will 
never  give  her  spiritual  happiness  or  satisfy  her  craving. 
Her  life  is  empty.  The  poem  was  based  on  an  actual 
occurrence.  It  contains  all  the  despair  of  love  that  was 
once  given  and  then  withdrawn. 

"O  wherefore  should  I  busk  my  head, 
Or  wherefore  should  I  kame  my  hair? 

"When  we  came  in  by  Glasgow  town 
We  were  a  comely  sight  to  see ; 
My  love  was  clad  in  the  black  velvet 
And  I  myself  in  cramasie." 

She  does  not  want  to  dress  herself  gorgeously  now  £is 
she  has  no  lover.  Among  other  great  love  wails  by  a 
woman  are  the  old  Saxon  elegy  "A  Woman's  Complaint" 
and  the  second  Idyl  of  Theocritus. 

All  the  pain  of  frustrated  love  is  due  to  the  repress- 
ing of  the  tender  as  well  as  of  the  physical  emotions,  to 
the  damming  up  of  the  libido,  which  is  love  in  its  broad- 
est sense. 

Sometimes  the  poets  tell  us  almost  plainly  their  real 
loss,  or  suggest  it  in  such  a  manner  that  we  feel  the 


154    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

thought  has  become  conscious  in  the  poem.  Read  in 
Tennyson's  "Locksley  Hall"  the  fifteen  lines  beginning, 
"Is  it  well  to  wish  thee  happy,"  and  one  can  see  that  the 
victim  is  suffering  because  Amy  is  in  another's  em- 
brace rather  than  in  that  of  the  singer's.  He  thinks  with 
maddening  thoughts  of  the  clown  she  married. 

"He  will  hol3   thee,   when   his  passion   shall   have   spent   its 

novel  forces, 
Something  better  than  his  dog,  a  little  dearer  than  his  horse." 

He  calls  sarcastically  upon  Amy  to  kiss  her  husband 
and  take  his  hand.  "He  will  answer  to  the  purpose." 
The  singer  clearly  shows  his  pain  because  he  has  been 
cheated  out  of  physical  pleasure. 

When  we  come  to  the  decadent  poets,  the  loss  is  sung 
plainly.  One  of  the  most  beautiful  poems  of  this  kind 
is  Dowson's  Cynara.  The  poem  is  frankly  sexual.  The 
poet,  who  was  rejected  by  a  restaurant  keeper's  daugh- 
ter, tries  to  console  himself  with  another  woman  for  his 
loss.  The  words  "I  have  been  faithful  to  thee,  Cynara, 
in  my  fashion"  mean  he  loves  her  in  others.  He  tries 
to  satisfy  himself  partly  by  thinking  he  is  with  her  while 
he  is  with  another.  It  is  a  poem  showing  how  a  sexual 
repression  seeks  an  outlet  with  some  one  who  did  not 
arouse  it  and  how  the  poet  forces  himself  to  imagine 
that  he  is  with  the  one  who  created  it.  The  poem 
makes  this  clear,  that  a  love  poem  is  always  a  complaint 
that  the  libido  is  being  dammed. 

It  is  therefore  true  to  say  that  even  in  the  tenderest 
and  sweetest  love  lyrics,  like  those  of  Burns  and  Shelley 
for  instance,  one  sees  the  play  of  unconscious  sexual 
forces.  This  fact  does  not  make  the  poem  and  the  less 
moral  or  the  poet  any  the  less  pure. 


SEXUAL  SYMBOLISM  155 


n 


Probably  the  greatest  objection  to  the  application  of 
psychoanalytic  methods  to  literature  will  be  made  to  the 
transference  of  the  sexual  interpretation  of  symbols  from 
the  realm  of  dreams  to  that  of  art.  But  if  the  interpre- 
tation is  correct  in  one  sphere  it  is  also  true  in  the  other. 
Civilisation  has  made  it  necessary  to  refer  in  actual 
"speech  to  sexual  matters  in  hidden  ways,  by  symbolic 
representations;  our  faculty  of  wit,  due  to  the  exercise 
of  the  censorship,  also  uses  various  devices  of  symboli- 
sation.  Dreams  and  literature  both  make  use  of  the 
same  symbols. 

When  Freud  attributed  sexual  significance  to  certain 
typical  dreams  like  those  of  riding,  flying,  swimming, 
climbing,  and  to  certain  objects,  like  rooms,  boxes,  snakes, 
trees,  burglars,  etc.,  he  made  no  artificial  interpretations. 
He  merely  pointed  out  the  natural  and  concrete  language 
of  the  unconscious. 

Now  the  same  interpretation  must  inevitably  follow 
in  literature,  much  as  authors  and  readers  may  object. 
If  flying  in  dreams  is  symbolic  of  sex,  then  an  author 
who  is  occupied  considerably  with  wishes  to  be  a  bird 
and  fly  or  with  descriptions  of  birds  flying — I  do  not 
mean  an  isolated  instance — is  like  the  man  who  is  al- 
ways dreaming  he  is  flying;  he  is  unconsciously  ex- 
pressing a  symbolical  wish.  Many  poems  written  to 
birds  in  literature  show  unconscious  sexual  manifesta- 
tions. Shelley's  "To  A  Skylark,"  Keats's  "To  A  Nightin- 
gale" and  Poe's  "Raven"  are  poems  where  the  authors 
sang  of  repressed  love;  there  is  unconscious  sex  symbol- 
ism in  them. 

Wordsworth,  one  of  the  poets  who  rarely  mentioned 


156    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

sex,  has  in  his  "To  a  Skylark"  unconsciously  given  us 
a  poem  of  sexual  significance.  The  motive  of  the  poem 
is  the  intense  longing  to  fly.  But  beneath  the  wish  to  fly 
in  the  poem,  as  in  the  imaginary  flying  in  the  dream, 
a  sexual  meaning  is  concealed.  The  poet  is  sad  when 
he  writes  the  poem  "I  have  walked  through  wildernesses 
dreary,  and  to-day  my  heart  is  weary."  He  also  thinks 
of  the  fact  that  the  bird  is  satisfied  in  love.  "Thou  hast 
a  nest  for  thy  love  and  thy  rest." 

Very  few  of  the  poems  addressed  to  birds  harp  on 
the  wish  to  fly  to  the  extent  that  Wordsworth  does  in 
this  poem.  Nearly  half  of  the  poem  is  taken  up  with 
this  wish,  and  for  this  reason  the  sexual  interpretation 
is  unmistakable. 

The  first  two  stanzas  are  as  follows: 

"Up  with  me !  up  with  me  into  the  clouds ! 
For  thy  song,   Lark,  is   strong; 
Up  with  me,  up  with  me  into  the  clouds! 
Singing,  singing. 

With  clouds  and  sky  about  thee  ringing, 
Lift  me,  guide  me  till  I  find 
That  spot  which  seems  so  to  thy  mind ! 

"I  have  walked  through  wildernesses  dreary 
And   to-day  my  heart  is   weary ; 
Had  I  now  the  wings  of  a  Fairy, 
Up  to  thee  would  I  fly. 

There  is  madness  about  thee,  and  joy  divine. 
In  that  song  of  thine; 
Lift   me,   guide   me   high    and   high 
To  thy  banqueting  place  in  the  sky." 

The  wish  in  literature  corresponds  to  the  fulfilment 
in  the  dream,  and  the  psychology  of  the  poet  who  wishes 
to  fly  is  like  that  of  the  dreamer  who  does  fly.  Uncon- 
scious sex  symbolism  is  voiced  in  poems  where  the  poet 
expresses  a  desire  to  be  a  bird,  or  fly  like  one,  such  as 


SEXUAL  SYMBOLISM  157 

those  by  Bernard  de  Ventadom,  the  great  Troubadour  of 
the  twelfth  century,  "The  Cuckoo,"  by  Michael  Bruce, 
the  Scotch  poet  who  died  young  from  consumption, 
and  others. 

I  quote  from  memory  the  chorus  of  a  poem  sung  in 
my  school  days: 

"Oh,  had  I  wings  to  fly  like  you 
Then   would  I   seek  my   love  so  true, 
And  never  more  we'd  parted  be, 
But  live  and  love  eternally." 

The  author  here  tells  us  most  plainly  why  he  or  she 
wants  to  fly  like  a  bird — for  the  satisfaction  of  love.  He 
says  practically  that  merely  by  flying  like  the  bird,  he 
would  have  the  embrace  of  the  loved  one.  The  open- 
ing lines  of  the  chorus  show  that  it  is  no  far-fetched 
idea,  that  of  seeing  sex  or  love  symbolism  in  birds 
flying  or  singing. 

We  recall  Burns's  famous  poem  to  the  bonny  bird 
that  sings  happily  and  reminds  him  of  the  time  when 
his  love  was  true.  "Thou'll  break  my  heart,  thou  bon- 
ny bird,"  he  sings  in  despair.  A  false  lover  stole  the 
rose  and  left  the  thorn  with  him.  The  entire  poem  is 
full  of  sex  symbolism.  That  he  too  would  like  to  have 
love,  is  what  he  says  when  he  speaks  of  the  bird  singing. 

"The  more  one  is  occupied  with  the  solution  of 
dreams,"  says  Freud,  "the  more  willingly  one  must  be- 
come to  acknowledge  that  the  majority  of  the  dreams 
of  adults  treat  of  sexual  material  and  give  expression 
to  erotic  wishes.  .  .  .  No  other  impulse  has  had  to 
undergo  as  much  suppression  from  the  time  of  child- 
hood as  the  sex  impulses  in  its  numerous  components; 
from  no  other  impulse  has  survived  so  many  and  such 
intense  unconscious  wishes,  which  now  act  in  the  sleep- 


IS8    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

ing  state  in  such  a  manner  as  to  produce  dreams." 
This,  to  my  mind,  can  not  be  contested,  and  these 
wishes  appear  largely  in  the  form  of  symbols.  In  early 
times  sex  was  given  great  significance,  and  we  know  that 
in  early  myths  and  literature  many  events  and  things 
were  sex  symbols.  When  we  dream  symbolically,  we 
go  back  to  a  method  of  picturing  events  that  in  early 
history  had  value,  but  of  which  the  significance  has  been 
forgotten.  The  law  of  symbol  formation  is  in  dreams 
not  an  arbitrary  one;  it  is  based  on  forms  of  speech 
in  the  past  and  on  witty  conceptions  of  to-day.  Folk- 
lore and  wit  are  full  of  sexual  symbols  corresponding  to 
those  in  dreams.  All  doubt  has  been  removed  of  sexual 
symbolism  in  dreams  by  an  experiment  made  by  means 
of  hypnotism,  where  a  patient  was  told  to  dream  some 
sexual  situation.  Instead  of  doing  so  directly  she 
dreamed  a  situation  in  symbolic  form  corresponding  to 
that  in  ordinary  dream  life.  Rank  and  Sachs  in  their 
The  Significance  oj  Psychoanalysis  for  the  Mental  Sci- 
ences have  given  us  an  excellent  study  of  the  nature  of 
symbol  formation.  Freud  has  furnished  us  a  list  of  ob- 
jects and  actions  that  are  of  sexual  significance.  W. 
Stekel  has  made  an  exhaustive  study  of  the  subject  in 
his  Sprache  des  Traumes  (1911).  Freud  recognises  R. 
A.  Schemer  as  the  true  discoverer  of  symbolism  in 
dreams  in  his  book  Das  Lebendcs  Traumes  (1896),  but 
he  admits  that  Artemidorus  in  the  second  century  A.D. 
also  interpreted  dreams  symbolically. 

Freud  ventures  the  opinion  that  dreams  about  com- 
plicated machinery  and  landscapes  and  trees  have  a 
definite  sexual  significance.  If  this  is  so,  and  he  gives 
his  reason  therefor,  it  would  mean  that  all  those  authors 
who  have  a  partiality  for  describing  landscapes  and  ma- 
chinery in  their  works  continually,  are  unconsciously  re- 


SEXUAL  SYMBOLISM  159 

vealing  a  personal  trait  they  never  intended  to  convey. 
.Ruskin  for  example  is  rich  in  landscapes  in  his  works. 
Is  there  any  connection  between  his  propensity  for  such 
description  and  his  attachment  to  his  mamma,  his  youth- 
ful love  disappointment,  his  unsuccessful  marriage  and 
his  sad  love  for  Rose  La  Touche?  Is  it  not  likely  that 
many  of  the  painters  who  made  a  specialty  of  landscape 
painting  were  driven  to  this  special  choice  by  an  un- 
conscious cause  that  the  world  has  not  fathomed,  a  sexual 
one?  No  doubt  there  is  a  connection  between  paintings 
of  female  nudes  and  the  sex  life  of  the  author  in  his 
unconscious;  why  should  not  the  same  be  true  of  the 
landscape  painters  and  all  the  writers  who  abound  in 
landscape  descriptions?  Is  it  not  possible  that  Turgenev, 
who  has  given  us  so  many  landscapes,  was  unconsciously 
thinking  of  his  first  love  disappointment  and  also  of 
his  love  for  Madame  Viardot?  We  find  landscapes  in 
every  literary  work  that  deals  with  the  country,  but 
Freud's  theory  can  have  applicability  only  to  the  author 
who  has  a  mania  for  them. 

WTiy  does  KipJing  have  a  keen  interest  in  bringing 
descriptions  of  machinery  into  his  works?  If  dreams  of 
machinery  relate  to  sex,  then  we  must  follow  the  logical 
conclusion  that  an  undue  interest  in  machinery  must 
evince  a  sexual  meaning.  We  are  also  aware  that  a  large 
number  of  popular  sexual  terms  are  taken  from  instru- 
ments in  the  machine-shop. 

I  do  not  maintain  that  objects  do  not  have  a  literal 
significance,  free  from  any  symbolic  intent. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  about  the  significance  of  the 
phallic  worship  of  old  times,  in  which  the  serpent  was 
symbolic.  Dreams  where  the  serpent  figures  and  folk 
tales  telling  of  dragons  who  are  symbolic  of  the  lustful 
side  of  man  both  have  a  sexually  symbolic  meaning. 


i6o    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

Again,  if  Freud  is  right  in  claiming  that  the  dream 
of  a  woman  throwing  herself  in  the  water  is  a  parturition 
dream,  then  one  would  have  to  conclude  that  a  woman 
occupied  constantly  with  stories  about  herself  swimming 
was  probably  absorbed  with  thoughts  about  child-bear- 
ing. That  this  significance  for  such  a  dream  is  not 
absurd  may  be  seen  from  the  following  statement  by 
Freud:  "In  dreams,  as  in  mythology,  the  delivery  of  a 
child  from  the  uterine  waters  is  commonly  presented  by 
distortion  as  the  entry  of  the  child  into  water;  among 
many  others,  the  births  of  Adonis,  Osiris,  Moses  and 
Bacchus  are  well  known  illustrations  of  this." 


in 

Freud  was  not  the  first  one  to  interpret  dreams  sym- 
bolically. There  have  been  excellent  symbolical  interpre- 
tations in  literature.  I  will  mention  one  in  Chaucer  and 
;another  in  Ovid. 

In  Chaucer's  Troilus  and  Criseyde,  one  of  the  great- 
est love  poems  ever  written  and  probably  a  greater  work 
of  art  than  any  of  the  Canterbury  Tales,  there  is  a 
true  symbolic  interpretation  of  an  anxiety  dream.  Troi- 
lus was  pining  for  his  love,  Criseyde,  who  had  been  led 
back  by  Diomede  to  the  Greeks  in  exchange  for  Antenor. 
Troilus  dreamt  that  he  saw  a  boar  asleep  in  the  sun 
and  that  Criseyde  was  embracing  and  kissing  it.  His 
suspicions  as  to  her  faithfulness  were  confirmed  by  the 
interpretation  given  by  his  sister  Cassandra,  who  told 
him  that  Criseyde  now  loved  Diomede;  Diomede  was 
descended  from  Meleager  the  slayer  of  the  boar,  which, 
according  to  the  myth,  once  ravaged  among  the  Greeks. 

Chaucer  throughout  his  works  attacks  the  theory  that 
dreams  may  be  interpreted,  but  he  gives  us  a  true  sym- 


SEXUAL  SYMBOLISM  i6i 

bolical  interpretation  in  this  poem.  He  also  here  record- 
ed unconsciously  some  of  his  own  past  griefs  in  love. 
Freud  taught  that  anxiety  dreams  were  due  to  the  repres- 
sion of  the  libido  being  converted  into  fear.  We  also 
know  from  anthropology  that  the  boar  was  a  sexual  sym- 
bol. In  the  poem  Diomede  appears  to  Troilus  as  a  boar, 
also,  because  Troilus  had  heard  the  story  of  Meleager 
and  the  boar  and  of  the  ancestry  of  Diomede.  Even 
though  he  had  forgotten  the  tale,  if  he  did,  since  he  was 
reminded  of  it  by  his  sister,  it  was  still  present  in  his 
unconscious.  His  anxiety  was  due  to  the  fear  that 
Diomede  had  really  won  Criseyde.  The  fear  that  he 
experienced  at  day,  that  his  sweetheart  would  be  lost 
to  him — the  anxiety  that  his  libido  would  be  repressed, 
become  an  anxiety  dream  in  which  the  boar  is  the  symbol 
of  his  rival. 

In  the  fifth  elegy  of  the  third  book  of  Ovid's  Amores, 
the  author  reports  a  symbolical  dream  of  the  loss  of  his 
love.  It  is  correctly  interpreted,  in  a  Freudian  manner, 
by  an  interpreter  of  dreams.  The  poet  dreamed  that  he 
took  shelter  from  the  heat  in  a  grove  under  a  tree.  He 
saw  a  very  white  cow  standing  before  him,  and  her  mate, 
a  horned  bull,  near  her  chewing  his  cud.  A  crow  pecked 
at  the  breast  of  the  cow  and  took  away  the  white  hair. 
The  cow  left  the  spot;  black  envy  was  in  her  breast 
as  she  went  over  to  some  other  bulls.  The  interpreter 
told  Ovid  that  the  heat  which  the  poet  was  seeking  to 
avoid  was  love,  that  the  cow  was  his  white-complexioned 
mistress  and  that  he  was  the  bull.  The  crow  was  a 
procuress  who  would  tempt  his  mistress  to  desert  him. 
The  sexual  symbolic  interpretation  shows  that  Freud's 
most  unpopular  idea  was  known  among  the  Romans. 
It  happened  that  Ovid's  mistress  did  prove  unfaithful  to 
iiim  and  he  complained  of  the  fact.     His  dream  arose. 


1 62    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

however,  from  his  day  fears,  and  he  had  previously  writ- 
ten a  poem  in  the  Amores  against  a  procuress. 

Ovid  is  one  of  the  greatest  love  poets  in  all  literature, 
and  his  Epistle  of  Sappho  to  Phaon  in  his  Heroides  trans- 
lated by  Pope  records  some  of  his  own  love  griefs,  though 
these  are  recorded  in  his  Amores  directly. 

The  symbolism  that  psychoanalysis  deals  with  is  that 
of  the  unconscious.  Symbols  may  have  the  most  signifi- 
cance when  the  dreamer  or  writer  least  suspects  it.  And 
it  is  only  by  the  studyj)f  folk-lore,  wit  and  the  neuroses 
that  one  gets  to  see  their  meaning.  — 

No  doubt  the  critic  who  examines  literary  master- 
pieces to  find  sexual  symbols  will  not  be  a  popular  one; 
but  that  does  not  alter  the  fact  that  the  sexual  mean- 
ing is  there.  The  field  will  no  doubt  be  taken  up  in  the 
future  by  some  critic  who  will  not  fear  to  brave  public 
wrath. 

It  will  be  seen  that  many  writers  who  were  deemed 
respectable  and  pure  because  they  never  dealt  with  sex- 
ual problems  are  full  of  sex  symbolism.  They  consciously 
strove  to  conceal  their  sex  interest,  but  their  uncon- 
scious use  of  sex  symbolism  shows  that  they  were  not 
as  indifferent  to  the  problems  as  they  would  lead  us  to 
imagine. 

Browning  rarely  wrote  directly  of  sex.  Hejs_admired_ 
justly  by  all  lovers  of  literature;  and  women  are  among 
his  most  enthusiastic  lovers.  Ifis  true  one  of  his  poems, 
the  "Statue  and  the  Bust,"  has  puzzled  his  women  ad- 
mirers. Adultery  seems  to  be  defended  here.  Now 
there  are  some  innocent  poems  of  the  poet  rich  in  sex 
symbolism.  It  is  well  known  that  dreams  of  riding  on 
horse-back,  rocking,  or  any  form  of  rhythmic  motion 
through  which  the  dreamer  goes,  are  sexually  symbolical. 
In  older  literature  and  in  colloquial  language  the  word 


SEXUAL  SYMBOLISM  163 

to  ride  is  used  in  a  sexual  sense.  Browning  is  especially 
addicted  to  writing  poems  describing  the  pleasure  of 
riding,  or  poems  in  rhythmic  verse  which  suggest  the 
riding  process.  It  has  never  dawned  on  critics  to  sug- 
gest that  there  may  be  a  cause  for  this  that  is  to  be 
found  in  the  unconscious  of  the  author. 

Take  his  "The  Last  Ride  Together."  The  speaker  who 
is  rejected  asks  his  love  to  give  him  the  pleasure  of  a 
last  ride  with  her.  Not  being  able  to  get  the  pleasures 
of  love  from  her,  he  seeks  them  in  another  form,  a  sym- 
bolic one.  He  will  now  imagine  that  he  receives  them; 
he  is  prompted  to  his  strange  request  by  unconscious 
causes.  He  wants  a  substitute  for  the  actuality.  "We 
ride  and  I  see  her  bosom  heave,"  he  says.  Every  stanza 
says  something  about  the  riding.  'T  ride,"  "We  ride," 
"I  and  she  ride"  are  repeated  throughout  the  poem.  He 
addresses  the  poet,  the  sculptor  and  the  musician  and 
tells  them  that  he  is  riding  instead  of  creating  art;  by 
this  he  means  that  they  express  their  longing  to  love  in 
art;  he  does  so  by  riding.  "Riding's  a  joy."  He  also  lies 
to  himself  and  pretends  he  is  not  angry  at  his  mistress 
and  that  perhaps  it  was  best  he  didn't  win  her  love;  he 
pretends  he  has  no  regrets  for  the  past  and  that  he  is 
satisfied  with  the  ride  instead  of  her  love.  The  poem 
is  an  excellent  example  of  the  unconscious  use  of  sym- 
bolism in  literature.    The  meaning  is  clear. 

Two  other  poems  of  Browning  where  sexual  sym- 
bolism may  be  present  though  there  is  nothing  of  love 
in  the  poems  are  the  famous  "How  They  Brought  the 
Good  News  from  Aix  to  Ghent"  and  "Through  the  Me- 
tidja  to  Abd-El-Kadr."  The  sexual  significance  can  be 
seen  in  the  rhythmic  swing,  for  both  poems  suggest  the 
motion  of  the  horse  rider.  The  effect  in  the  latter  poem 
is  produced  by  the  use  of  the  words  "I  ride"  twice  in 


1 64    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

the  first,  third  and  eighth  lines  of  each  of  the  five  stanzas, 
thirty  times,  and  by  having  each  of  the  forty  lines  end 
with  "ride"  or  a  rhyme  to  "ride." 

"As  I  ride,  as  I  ride, 
With  a  full  heart  for  my  guide, 
So  its  tide  rocks  my  side,  as  I  ride, 
As  I  ride,  as  I  ride. 
That,   as   I    were   double-eyed. 
He,  in  whom  our  tribes  confide, 
Is  descried,   ways   untried 
As  I  ride,  as  I  ride." 

IV 

I  do  not  believe  that  nature  worship  idea  in  literature 
has  been  yet  fully  analysed.  Critics  have  refused  to  see 
the  exact  meaning  of  the  expression  "love  of  nature." 
The  poets  themselves  have  told  us  that  they  saw  in 
nature  lessons  of  moral  improvement  and  inspirations 
for  humanitarianism.  Granting  that  this  is  so,  the  fact 
still  remains  that  there  is  much  left  unsaid  by  the  poets. 
Some  of  them  recognised  the  real  significance  of  their 
love  for  nature  when  they  told  us  how  they  were  inspired 
by  her  to  love,  or  were  reminded  of  their  lack  of  love. 

Wordsworth,  who  is  one  of  the  greatest  nature  poets_ 
_the  world  has  ever  had,  appears  singularly  free  from  the_ 
voicing  of  the  love  passion  in  his  work.  Except  for  the 
Lucy  poems  and  a  few  others,  he  has  given  us  little  love 
poetry.  Hazlitt  complained  that  he  found  no  mar- 
riages or  giving  in  marriage  in  Wordsworth's  poetry.  But 
nevertheless  the  sex  element  is  there  though  never  di- 
rectly expressed.  Thexe.  is  nothing,  it  is  well  known,  cal- 
culated to  make^a-jnan  long  for  the  love  of  woman  or 
to  miss  her  more  than  when  he  is  in  the  presence  of 
nature.  Anthropolo,gy  teaches  us  the  close  connection 
between  love  and  nature.     When  Wordsworth  sang  of 


SEXUAL  SYMBOLISM  165 

the  beauties  of  nature  he  was  voicing  a  cry  for  satisfied 
love  which  he  did  not  have  up  to  his  thirtieth  year,  when 
he  married.  He  was  also  pining  for  love  of  the  girl 
he  met  in  France  in  his  twenty-third  year,  the  mother 
of  his  illegitimate  daughter.  The  poet  was  using  sym- 
bols, such  as  trees  and  daisies,  whose  glory  he  sang 
when  he  meant  he  wished  he  had  love.  Some  things  can 
be  enjoyed  alone,  though  not  altogether,  such  as  food, 
plays,  pictures,  reading,  music,  lectures,  etc.  It  is  the 
great  distinction  of  nature  that  she  inspires  human  love 
and  also  provokes  sadness. 

Most  of  the  old  bucolic  poets  frankly  associated  their 
Corydons  and  Amaryllises  with  enjojonent  of  nature. 
Wordsworth,  who  had  much  of  the  English  Puritanism, 
was  reserved.  Any  reader  who  takes  up  the  nature  poetry 
of  Wordsworth  lays  it  down  after  a  while  with  the  feel- 
ing that  the  poet  is  not  telling  the  whole  truth.  It  does 
not  follow  that  Wordsworth  was  deliberately  concealing 
it,  for  he  may  have  been  unaware  of  what  was  in  his 
unconscious.  After  he  married  and  had  love  he  contin- 
ued for  a  while  to  give  us  great  nature  poetry,  for  the 
most  part  a  reflection  of  his  early  mood.  For  it  must 
not  be  assumed  that  because  a  man  has  love  he  there- 
fore loses  his  love  for  nature.  Wordsworth's  greatest 
nature  poem,  "Lines  on  Tintern  Abbey,"  was  vrritten  be- 
fore his  marriage;  the  nature  poetry  of  the  last  thirty 
or  forty  years  of  his  life  was  rather  poor. 

The  secret  of  Wordsworth's  great  nature  poetry  is 
this:  it  was  a  sublimation  of  his  unsatisfied  love  cravings 
and  a  symbolic  means  of  expressing  them.  Instead  of 
singing  directly  of  his  longing  for  love,  or  creating  imag- 
inary love  scenes  for  himself,  or  voicing  despair,  as  other 
poets  did,  he  expressed  his  passion  for  nature  and  thus 
vented  himself  unconsciously  of  his  feelings.    True,  the 


1 66    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

impulse  of  the  vernal  wood  interested  him  because  it 
taught  him  much  about  moral  evil  and  good ;  it  made  him 
also  think  of  love  and  he  sang  of  his  love  indirectly  by 
praising  that  impulse. 

This  theory  which  seems  so  inevitable  is  one  to  which 
we  are  forced  from  so  many  human  experiences  with 
nature  and  yet  critics  have  not  dared  to  advance  it.  The 
psychology  of  nature  worship  will  no  doubt  be  more 
completely  studied  by  psychoanalysts  some  day,  and 
we  will  understand  our  nature  poets  better.  The  in- 
terpretation may  offend  those  who  WcUit  to  persuade 
themselves  that  nature  has  only  sermons  for  us,  but  let 
the  reader  take  up  some  of  the  sensuous  nature  descrip- 
tions in  Keats  and  Spenser  and  he  will  realise  more 
clearly  the  underlying  meaning  of  nature  worship. 

It  is  significant  that  much  sexual  symbolism  has 
been  found  in  two  poets  who  were  deemed  most  ret- 
icent on  the  subject  of  sex — Wordsworth  and  Brown- 
ing. 


There  is  no  better  proof  that  common  objects,  when 
possible,  were  formerly  assigned  sexual  associations,  than 
the  obscene  riddles  of  the  Exeter  Book.  This  work  is 
largely  attributed  to  the  second  great  English  poet 
Cynewulf  in  the  eighth  century.  Certain  riddles  are 
propounded  which  reek  with  lewd  suggestions,  and  the 
answer  is  supposed  to  be  some  object  innocent  in  itself; 
it  is  apparent,  however,  from  the  questions  and  descrip- 
tions given  that  the  interest  in  this  object  is  because  it 
is  sexually  symbolical.  Thus  the  answers  meant  for  the 
26th,  45th,  46th,  55th,  63rd  and  64th  riddles  of  the 
Exeter  Book  are  leek,  key,  dough,  churn,  poker  and 
beaker,  respectively.     The  reader  will   note  thus  how 


SEXUAL  SYMBOLISM  167 

these  objects  had  a  sexual  symbolic  meaning  for  our 
ancestors. 

Professor  Frederic  Tupper  in  his  scholarly  work  The 
Riddles  of  the  Exeter  Book  says:  "By  far  the  most 
numerous  of  all  riddles  of  lapsing  or  varying  solutions 
are  those  distinctly  popular  and  unrefined  problems 
whose  sole  excuse  for  being  (or  lack  of  excuse)  lies  in 
double  meaning  and  coarse  suggestion,  and  the  reason 
for  this  uncertainty  of  answer  is  at  once  apparent.  The 
formally  stated  solution  is  so  overshadowed  by  the  ob- 
scene subject  implictly  presented  in  each  limited  motive 
of  the  riddle,  that  little  attention  is  paid  to  the  aptness 
of  this.  It  is  after  all  only  a  pretence,  not  the  chief 
concern  of  the  jest."  He  quotes  from  another  scholar, 
Wossidlo,  a  number  of  other  objects  than  those  sug- 
gested in  the  Exeter  Book,  which  in  other  riddle  books 
were  invested  with  sexual  symbolism.  These  are  spin- 
ning wheel,  kettle  and  pike,  yarn  and  weaver,  frying- 
pan  and  hare,  soot-pole,  butcher,  bosom,  fish  on  the  hook, 
trunk-key,  beer-keg,  stocking,  mower  in  grass,  butter- 
cask  and  bread-scoop. 

Freud  is  apparently  correct  when  he  stated  that  famil- 
iar objects  of  our  day  Kke  umbrellas  and  machinery  are 
given  a  sexual  significance  by  our  dreams  unconsciously. 

That  man  early  expressed  his  interest  in  love  in  sym- 
bolical terms  is  conceded  by  most  anthropologists  and 
ghHologists.  They  have  traced  the  origins  of  many  of 
our  customs  and  institutions,  our  words  and  figures  of 
rhetoric,  to  the  veiled  eroticism  of  former  times.  In  our 
speech  are  many  terms  which  now  have  a  distinct  sexual 
significance,  though  they  originally  had  a  symbolic  one. 
The  word  for  seed  in  Hebrew  is  zera,  the  Latin  word  is 
semen  (from  sero,  to  sow).  Both  words  are  also  used 
for  spermatozoa.     Man  formerly  sought  analogies  just 


1 68    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

as  he  does  to-day;  he  often  feared  to  violate  a  taboo,  or 
aimed  at  a  delicacy  of  expression.  He  saw  the  life  pro- 
ducing principle  at  work  everywhere,  and  he  found  sym- 
bols for  it  in  the  phenomena  of  nature,  in  the  sun,  moon, 
water,  forest,  garden,  field,  trees,  roses;  in  animals  like 
the  serpent,  the  horse,  the  bull,  the  fish,  the  goat,  the 
dove;  in  implements  like  the  arrow,  the  sword,  the 
plough.  Common  objects  assumed  for  him  suggestive 
meanings.  He  saw  a  means  of  coining  new  expressions 
for  generative  acts  and  objects;  he  found  associations 
when  he  used  the  fire-drill  drilling  in  the  hollow  of  the 
wood,  or  when  he  threw  wood  upon  the  fire.  In  later 
time  he  coined  new  symbolical  terms  suggested  by  such 
acts  of  his  as  stuffing  a  cork  in  a  bottle,  or  putting  bread 
in  the  oven,  or  inserting  a  key  in  the  lock. 

Man  speaks  in  symbolic  language  especially  when  it 
comes  to  sex  matters.  This  symbolism  appears  hence  in 
his  dreams  and  his  literature.  The  language  of  the  un- 
conscious is  symbolic,  and  literature  is  often  expressing 
the  author's  unconscious  in  symbolic  terms  without  his 
being  aware  of  this. 

When  poets  celebrate  the  ceremonies  about  the  May 
pole  they  may  not  know  that  this  celebration  is  related 
to  early  phallic  worship.  When  ^schylus  wrote  his 
play  of  Prometheus  stealing  the  fire,  or  Milton  used  the 
Biblical  material  of  Eve  tempted  by  the  serpent,  they 
were  probably  ignorant  of  the  sexual  associations  of  fire 
and  the  serpent  in  ancient  times.  But  their  own  works 
thus  become  symbolical.  Shelley,  for  example,  used  the 
metaphor  of  the  snake  quite  often,  and  one  of  the  best 
known  passages  in  his  works  is  the  description  of  the 
fight  of  the  eagle  and  the  serpent  in  The  Revolt  of 
Islam.  He  often  referred  to  himself  also,  as  the  snake. 
Yet  he  may  not  have  been  aware  there  was  an  uncon- 


SEXUAL  SYMBOLISM  169 

scious  connection  between  his  interest  in  free  love  and 
the  symbol  of  the  serpent. 

The  part  played  by  symbolism  in  love  poetry  is  seen 
especially  in  The  Song  oj  Songs.  To  us  moderns  and 
occidentals  many  of  the  comparisons  and  symbolical  rep- 
resentations seem  very  strange,  but  they  had  their  ori- 
gin not  in  the  poet's  own  conceits  but  in  a  historic  use 
of  the  language.  This  most  celebrated  of  all  love  poems 
fairly  swarms  with  sensuous  symbolic  images.  It  proves 
that  early  man  saw  lascivious  suggestions  everywhere  in 
the  landscapes,  in  flowers,  rocks,  trees,  country,  city,  ani- 
mals.   The  speech  of  our  ancestors  was  sexualised. 

The  beloved  in  the  poem,  which  is  a  dialogue  between 
her  and  her  lover,  is  like  a  wall  with  towers  (the 
breasts);  she  is  a  vineyard;  she  is  in  the  clefts  of  the 
rock  and  the  hidden  hollow  of  the  cliff.  She  has  eyes 
like  doves,  her  hair  is  like  a  flock  of  straying  goats,  her 
teeth  like  a  flock  of  washed  ewes,  her  lips  like  a  scarlet 
thread,  her  temples  like  pomegranate,  her  neck  like  the 
tower  of  David  builded  with  turrets  and  hung  with  shields, 
her  breasts  like  twin  fawns  feeding  among  the  lilies.  She 
is  a  closed  garden,  a  shut  up  spring,  a  sealed  fountain. 
The  roundings  of  her  thighs  are  like  the  link  of  a  chain, 
her  navel  is  like  a  round  empty  goblet,  her  belly  like  a 
heap  of  wheat  set  among  lilies,  her  eyes  like  the  pools  of 
Heshbon,  her  nose  like  the  tower  of  Lebanon. 

The  lover  is  like  an  apple  tree  among  the  trees  of 
the  wood;  he  is  a  young  hart.  His  head  is  as  fine  gold, 
his  eyes  are  like  doves,  his  cheeks  are  a  bed  of  spices, 
as  a  bank  of  sweet  herbs;  his  lips  are  lilies  dropping 
myrrh,  his  hands  are  as  rods  of  gold  set  with  beryl,  his 
body  is  polished  ivory  overlaid  with  sapphires,  his  legs 
are  pillars  of  marble  set  in  sockets  of  gold;  his  aspect 
like  Lebanon,  chosen  like  the  cedar. 


170    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

The  embrace  of  the  lovers  is  described  symbolically  by 
means  of  the  tree  symbol.  It  is  known  that  the  tree  was 
formerly  used  to  represent  both  sexes.  "The  bisexual 
symbolic  character  of  the  tree,"  says  Jung  in  his  Psy- 
chology of  the  Unconscious  (P.  248),  "is  intimated  by 
the  fact  that  in  Latin  trees  have  a  masculine  termina- 
tion and  a  feminine  gender."  The  lover  in  the  Song  of 
Songs  calls  his  beloved  a  tree  and  says  he  will  climb  up 
to  the  palm  tree  and  take  hold  of  the  branches;  his 
beloved's  breasts  will  be  as  clusters  of  the  vine  and  the 
smell  of  her  countenance  like  apples. 

Students  of  anthropology  will  recognise  all  the  sex 
symbols  in  this  poem  and  will  find  analogies  in  other 
literatures.  This  great  love  poem  is  regarded  by  many, 
curiously  enough,  as  a  religious  allegory.  The  chapter 
headings  in  the  King  James  version  of  the  Bible  represent 
Christ  and  the  Church  as  symbols  of  the  lovers.  Higher 
criticism  has  recognised  the  fact  that  the  poem  is  a  love 
poem.  This  is  also  proved  by  the  fact  that  from  time 
immemorial  it  has  been  the  practice  of  orthodox  Hebrews 
to  read  it  on  the  Sabbath  eve,  which  is  the  time  for  love 
embrace  among  them. 

VI 

Psychoanalysis  has  gone  far,  indeed,  in  seeing  sex 
symbolism  in  many  objects  and  ceremonies  and  alle- 
gories where  it  was  least  expected  to  exist.  Freud  and 
Jung,  though  they  differ  in  their  views  here,  see  in  many 
symbols  concealed  incestuous  wishes.  They  have  dealt 
with  the  subject  in  Totem  and  Taboo  and  The  Phychol- 
ogy  of  the  Unconscious,  respectively.  I  have  no  inten- 
tion of  going  into  the  differences  between  their  theories. 

Artists  in  the  mediaeval  ages,  who  always  drew  and 
painted    the   Virgin   Mary,   showed   also   unconsciously 


SEXUAL  SYMBOLISM  171 

in  a  symbolic  form  the  infantile  incestuous  wishes  for 
their  own  mothers.  By  this  I  simply  imply  that  having 
failed  to  find  love  in  real  life,  they  took  shelter  in  their 
love  for  their  mothers.  A  modern  critic  has  divined  the 
significance  of  the  worship  of  the  Virgin  in  so  fine  a 
poet  as  Verlaine,  who,  while  he  embraced  Catholicism, 
was  not  a  churchman  in  the  strict  acceptance  of  the 
word.  In  his  French  Literary  Studies,  Professor  T.  B. 
Rudmose-Brown  says  of  Verlaine:  "It  is  his  intense  need 
of  a  love  that  will  not  return  upon  itself  that  makes 
Verlaine  turn  to  Christ's  Virgin  Mother — the  Rosa  Mys- 
tica  in  whom  he  found  all  the  qualities  he  looked  for  in 
vain  in  his  cruelly  divine  child-wife  and  his  many 
'amies'  of  later  life — and  crouch  like  a  weary  child  be- 
neath her  wondrous  mantle."  Verlaine  used  the  Virgin 
as  a  symbolic  emblem.  He  unconsciously  craved  for  the 
love  of  his  mother  since  in  later  life  he  was  divorced  by 
his  wife. 

The  symbol  then  often  becomes  under  our  new  science 
the  means  of  recovering  the  love  one  felt  as  a  child  for 
one's  own  mother.  The  author  may  not  be  aware  that 
this  use  of  the  symbol  is  being  made  by  him.  He  uses 
the  earth  to-day,  as  man  from  time  immemorial  has  used 
it,  as  a  symbol  of  the  mother,  when  he  exclaims  he  wants 
to  die  and  go  back  to  mother  earth. 

The  researches  of  scholars  have  established,  then,  the 
connection  between  love  and  symbolic  expressions  there- 
of, and  it  will  be  the  task  of  future  critics  to  discover 
the  author's  unconscious  expression  of  his  love  life  by 
S3anbols.  Just  as  the  horse  shoe,  the  mandrake  and  the 
four-leafed  clover,  which  are  signs  of  good  luck  among 
superstitious  people,  were  originally  symbols  of  fruitful- 
ness,  so  other  objects  described  in  books  will  be  seen  to 
have  a  sexual  origin  through  a  study  of  anthropology. 


CHAPTER  XII 
cannibalism:  the  atreus  legend 


It  will  be  probably  a  shock  to  many  people  to  be  told 
that  the  cannibalistic  instinct  still  is  part  of  our  uncon- 
scious. It  appears  in  that  pathological  state  known  as 
lycanthropy  where  the  patient  often  has  a  craving  for 
human  flesh.  It  is  occasionally  revived  in  cases  of  starva- 
tion and  shipwreck,  when  men  are  driven  to  eat  human 
flesh.  There  should  be  nothing  strange  about  this,  for 
we  are  descended  from  people  who  were  cannibals.  And 
we  know  that  men  of  the  old  stone  age  in  France  were 
cannibals  and  it  was  practised  in  Greece  in  earliest  times. 
It  has  not  yet  been  exterminated  in  parts  of  Africa  and 
Polynesia. 

Cannibalism  figured  considerably  in  ancient  literature. 
It  is  not  my  purpose  to  go  into  the  question  of  its  ori- 
gin, or  the  ceremonials  connected  with  it.  There  are 
good  articles  on  the  subject  in  the  Encyclopxdia  of  Re- 
ligmi  and  Ethics  by  J.  A.  MacCullouch  and  in  the  En- 
cyclopcedia  Britannica  by  Northcote  W.  Thomas.  I  shall, 
however,  touch  on  instances  where  men  ate  human  flesh 
at  sacrifices. 

Cannibalism  to-day  has  chiefly  a  historic  and  a  liter- 
ary interest.  The  subject  is  worth  taking  up  because  of 
the  attention  paid  to  it  in  literature.  We  have  tales 
about  it  to-day.     Conrad  has  given  us  in  his  Folk  a 

172 


CANNIBALISM:  THE  ATREUS  LEGEND     173 

story  of  cannibalism.  Falk  was  the  survivor  on  a 
wrecked  ship  and  was  driven  by  hunger  to  feast  on  the 
bodies  of  sailors,  thus  saving  his  life.  The  memory  of 
the  event  is  of  course  horrible  to  him.  The  young  lady 
he  loves  marries  him  despite  his  experience. 

One  of  Jack  London's  stories  of  cannibalism  is  "The 
Whale  Tooth"  in  his  South  Sea  Tales.  It  tells  how  a 
missionary  who  went  out  to  convert  some  Fiji  cannibals 
was  betrayed  by  Ra  Vatu,  a  heathen  about  to  embrace 
Christianity.  The  savage  desired  the  missionary's  boots 
to  present  to  a  chief.  In  spite  of  his  acceptance  of  the 
religion  of  Christ  he  was  willing  to  have  his  bene- 
factor made  a  victim  of  cannibalism.  In  the  same  story 
London  refers  to  a  chief  who  ate  eight  hundred  and 
seventy-two  bodies. 

Cannibalism  is  to  us  but  a  curiosity  that  we  once 
practised.  We  find  no  injunction  against  cannibalism, 
or  eating  one's  children,  among  the  crimes  on  the  stat- 
ute books.  It  is  no  crime  under  the  Common  Law.  A 
man  who  would  commit  cannibalism  among  us  would 
be  sent  to  an  insane  institution.  There  are  no  laws 
against  a  thing  when  no  one  has  the  least  inclination 
to  do  it.  Society  recognises  that  the  instinct  for  canni- 
balism is  dead,  but  it  is  nevertheless  in  our  unconscious. 
Our  psyche  never  forgets  the  episodes  in  the  lives  of  our 
ancestors. 

The  only  places  where  there  are  laws  against  canni- 
balism are  in  savage  countries  where  there  is  a  disposi- 
tion to  practise  it;  and  these  laws  are  made  by  colonists. 

It  is  prevalent  to-day  in  Africa.  John  H.  Weeks  in 
Among  Congo  Cannibals  (1913)  tells  us  he  saw  savages 
carrying  dismembered  parts  of  human  bodies  for  a  feast 
and  that  he  was  offered  some  cooked  human  food.  He 
also  speaks  of  a  white  man  who  was  a  dealer  in  human 


174    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

flesh  to  a  tribe,  an  example  of  degradation  that  finds  a 
parallel  in  Kurtz's  conduct  in  Conrad's  story  The  Heart 
of  Darkness.  Mr.  Herbert  Ward  in  his  A  Voice  from 
Congo  (1910)  describes  how  some  human  victims  were 
hawked  to  pieces,  alive,  for  feasts;  he  witnessed  or- 
ganised traffic  in  human  flesh  and  saw  several  cannibal 
feasts. 

n 

Let  us  mark  the  part  played  by  cannibalism  in  ancient 
Greek  literature.  We  will  see  that  the  cannibalistic  in- 
stinct was  part  of  the  psychic  life  of  the  earliest  Greeks. 
There  was  a  reaction  to  it  as  there  was  to  incest  of  the 
son  with  the  mother  as  shown  in  Sophocles's  Oedipus. 
Enforced  cannibalism,  where  a  man  was  made  to  eat  his 
own  children  unknowingly,  is  the  revenge  motive  of  the 
famous  Greek  play—Agamemnon;  this  play  depicts  the 
reaction  to  cannibalism. 

In  the  Atreus  legend  which  ^Eschylus  used  in  Aga- 
memnon, Thyestes  eats  the  flesh  of  his  children,  offered 
up  to  him  by  his  brother  Atreus,  in  revenge  for  having 
seduced  Atreus's  wife.  In  expiation  of  Atreus's  crime  his 
future  descendants  suffer.  The  unfortunate  Thyestes 
had  a  son,  ^gisthus,  as  the  offspring  of  the  connection 
with  Atreus's  wife — (Pelopia,  Thyestes's  own  daughter, 
by  the  way).  Atreus  and  his  son  Agamemnon  were  later 
killed  by  ^Egisthus,  who  had  besides  seduced  Agamem- 
non's wife  Clytemnestra.  Agamemnon's  son,  Orestes, 
avenges  the  murder  by  killing  his  m.other  and  her  para- 
mour. Orestes  is  shown  as  expiating  his  matricide  in  the 
Oresteia  trilogy  of  which  Agamemnon  is  the  first  play. 

In  .^schylus's  Agamemnon,  we  have  the  expiation  of 
the  crime  of  Atreus  for  enforcing  cannibalism  on  his 
brother.     There  are  several  passages  dealing  with  the 


CANNIBALISM:  THE  ATREUS  LEGEND     175 

crime.  iEgisthus  describes  in  detail  how  his  father 
Thyestes  ate  the  flesh  of  his  own  children  and  how  he 
vomited  when  he  was  told  what  he  had  done.  When 
Cassandra,  who  returns  with  Agamemnon,  in  her  insane 
ravings  is  telling  of  the  punishment  to  befall  Clytemnes- 
tra  she  has  a  vision  of  the  old  feast  of  the  children.  The 
Chorus  also  tells  about  the  story. 

All  this  shows  the  horror  which  was  inspired  by  a  deed, 
the  eating  of  one's  children,  and  this  must  mean  that 
way  back  in  antiquity  this  act  was  practised  and  that  the 
Greeks  were  now  describing  the  act  as  revolting. 

There  are  several  other  stories  of  enforced  cannibalism 
in  ancient  literature  with  revenge  as  the  motive.  Hero- 
dotus tells  us  how  the  King  of  the  Medes  punished 
Harpagus  for  not  killing  Cyrus  by  making  Harpagus  dine 
on  the  flesh  of  his  own  son.  This  was  in  the  sixth  cen- 
tury B.  C.  Tereus,  King  of  the  Thracians,  was  served 
up  his  son  by  the  latter's  own  mother,  because  Tereus 
dishonoured  his  sister-in-law,  Philomela,  and  deprived  her 
of  her  tongue.  In  one  of  Grimm's  fairy  tales,  The  Juni- 
per Tree,  we  have  the  story  of  a  man  who  is  given  the 
flesh  of  his  own  child  by  his  wife,  the  child's  step- 
mother. 

Seneca  in  the  first  century  A.  D.  wrote  Thyestes,  dra- 
matising all  the  repulsive  episodes,  describing  the  pre- 
paring of  the  children  for  the  feast  and  the  feast  itself. 
The  most  loathsome  theme  is  made  the  main  idea  of  the 
story.  Shakespeare  has  a  scene  in  Titus  Andronicus 
where  Titus  makes  the  wicked  Tamora  eat  the  heads  of 
her  two  sons  baked  in  a  pie.  Crebillon  wrote  a  canni- 
balistic play  in  the  i8th  century,  Atree  et  Thyeste. 

The  tale  of  Saturn,  who  swallowed  his  children  when 
they  were  born  so  as  not  to  be  dethroned  in  accordance 
with  the  prophecy,  with  the  result  that  he  was  com- 


176    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

pelled  to  disgorge  them  later  by  Zeus,  has  its  parallels 
in  folk-lore  among  the  Bushmen,  Eskimos  and  others.  It 
is  a  very  old  story. 

Freud  saw  in  the  CEdipus  legend  the  horror  reaction 
of  the  Greeks  to  two  legendary  deeds,  the  killing  of  a 
father  and  the  marrying  of  the  mother  by  the  son,  deeds 
which  had  their  basis  in  reality  and  which  were  occa- 
sionally repeated  in  dreams.  Similarly  we  can  see  in  the 
Atreus  legend  a  reaction  to  the  idea  of  eating  one's 
children,  an  act  that  used  to  accompany  the  offering 
of  human  sacrifices.  But  we  cannot  say  that  the  can- 
nibalistic instinct  affects  one's  future  as  the  (Edipus 
complex  does.  It  is,  however,  part  of  our  unconscious. 
The  effectiveness  of  Swift's  famous  satirical  proposition 
to  help  the  poor  in  Ireland  by  suggesting  that  they  sell 
the  flesh  of  their  own  children  for  food  to  the  rich,  is  due 
to  the  fact  that  children's  flesh  was  actually  once  eaten. 
Swift  wrote  his  essay  with  ironical  intent  but  he  was 
utilising  an  ancient  historical  fact,  unknowingly. 

We  know  from  the  stories  of  Abraham  and  Isaac,  Jeph- 
thah  and  his  daughter,  and  Iphigenia,  as  well  as  from 
historical  records,  that  children  were  offered  as  human 
sacrifices  and  that  the  body  of  the  victim  was  often 
eaten;  hence  there  is  a  connection  between  human  sacri- 
fice and  cannibalism. 

J.  A.  MacCullouch  in  his  scholarly  article  on  can- 
nibalism in  the  Encyclopcedia  of  Religion  and  Ethics, 
ventures  the  opinion  that  human  sacrifice  rose  through 
an  earlier  cannibalism,  on  the  principle  that  as  men 
liked  human  flesh  the  Gods  would  also  relish  it.  The 
worshippers  later  shared  in  the  human  feasts,  with  the 
Gods.  Westermarck  says  that  the  sacrificial  form  of 
cannibalism  springs  from  the  idea  that  a  victim  of- 
fered to  a  God  participates  in  his  sanctity  and  the  wor- 


CANNIBALISM:  THE  ATREUS  LEGEND     177 

shipper  by  eating  the  human  flesh  transfers  to  himself 
something  of  the  divine  virtue. 

There  were  many  cases  of  orgastic  cannibaUsm  in  an- 
cient Greece.  There  is  a  vase  showing  a  Thracian  tear- 
ing a  child  with  his  teeth  in  the  presence  of  a  god.  Pau- 
sanias  relates  that  a  child  was  torn  and  eaten  in  a  sac- 
rifice to  the  Gods  in  Boeotia.  In  Plato's  Republic,  VIII 
566,  we  have  an  account  of  a  survival  of  an  earlier  canni- 
bal sacrificial  feast.  It  is  related  there  that  a  piece  of 
human  flesh  was  placed  among  the  animals  sacrificed 
to  Zeus  Lycaeus  and  that  in  the  feasts  that  followed  the 
eater  of  the  fragments  became  a  were-wolf. 

Other  people  like  the  Fijis  who  partook  in  a  human 
feast  offered  first  part  of  the  slain  to  the  gods. 

The  custom  of  human  sacrifices  and  cannibalism  died 
out  among  the  Greeks,  and  in  ^Eschylus's  trilogy  we 
have  the  horror  reaction  of  the  educated  Greek  against 
these  institutions.  The  playwright  shows  the  terrible 
retaliation  visited  on  the  man  who  indulges  in  cannibalism 
or  makes  another  do  so.  Punishment  for  Atreus's  deed 
is  visited  upon  his  son,  Agamemnon,  in  many  ways,  one 
of  which  is  being  forced  to  sacrifice  his  daughter  Iphige- 
nia.  Agamemnon  is  also  punished  by  the  infidelity  of 
his  wife  with  ^gisthus,  and  by  being  murdered  by  them. 

The  tale  of  Iphigenia  thus  sheds  some  light  on  the 
subject.  She  figures  considerably  in  the  Agamemnon. 
^schylus  tells  us  that  Clytemnestra  felt  justified  for 
being  untrue  to  her  husband  Agamemnon  because  he 
sacrificed  their  daughter  Iphigenia.  The  latter's  name 
is  closely  associated  with  human  sacrifice  in  Greek  legend. 

In  the  Saturnalia  of  Rome  a  human  victim  was  slain 
as  late  as  the  fourth  century  A.  D, 

The  theory  then  resolves  itself  to  this:     In  very  ai;i- 


178    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

cient  times  before  Greek  civilisation  made  its  appear- 
ance children  were  sacrificed  to  ward  off  evil  and  the 
flesh  of  those  children  was  eaten  by  the  parents.  There 
rose  a  reaction  to  this  which  we  see  in  the  Atreus  legend. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

SOME    PSYCHOANALYSIS    AND    LITERARY    CRITICISM 


Psychoanalysis  will  put  in  a  new  light  the  old  liter- 
ary controversies  between  realism  and  idealism,  be- 
tween classicism  and  romanticism.  Idealistic  writers  are 
those  who  write  of  imaginary  pleasing  scenes  and  char- 
acters. Their  books  are  founded  on  the  same  principles 
that  are  at  the  basis  of  dreams;  these  are  the  fulfilment 
of  the  author's  wishes.  We  grow  weary  of  a  deluge  of 
such  literature,  because  it  is  too  visionary  and  not  re- 
lated to  reality.  We  prefer  to  see  life  as  it  is,  even 
though  it  is  harsh.  Hence  our  reaction  to  those  ancient 
types  of  romances  where  the  heroes  are  always  strong, 
pursuing  false  ideals,  obeying  silly  codes  of  honour,  and 
are  always  triumphant;  we  weary  still  more  of  the  hero- 
ines who  are  always  without  individuality.  The  most 
idealistic  books  are  those  dealing  with  Utopias,  and 
though  the  new  visionary  societies  are  as  a  rule  undesir- 
able and  impossible,  they  represent  the  wish  of  the 
author  fulfilled;  such  works  sometimes,  as  in  the 
case  of  Plato's  Republic  and  More's  Utopia,  are  full  of 
valuable  suggestions.  Utopias,  however,  are  generally 
dreary  because  they  make  no  allowances  for  our  in- 
stincts; the  author  is  insincere  to  himself  and  pretends 
to  be  what  he  is  not. 

179 


i8o    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

Then  there  is  the  idealistic  literature  which  builds  a 
dream  palace  beyond  this  life.  The  author  wants  to 
live  forever  and  to  have  things  he  did  not  possess  here, 
and  he  creates  imaginary  scenes  where  all  that  he  suf- 
fered here  is  righted.  Of  this  type  of  literature  is  the 
Paradise  of  Dante,  and  the  Celestial  City  of  Bunyan. 
Literature  of  this  type  pleases  many  people,  as  it  enables 
them  to  get  away  from  reality  and  to  have  a  ground  for 
believing  in  the  existence  of  chimeras  they  cherish. 

Idealism  in  literature  is  the  selection  for  description  of 
only  those  features  of  life  that  please  the  fancy  of  the 
author.  People  are  described  not  as  they  are  but  as  the 
author  would  like  them  to  be;  events  are  narrated  not 
as  they  occur  in  life  but  as  the  writer  would  wish  them 
to  happen.  The  dream  of  the  author  is  given  instead  of 
an  actual  picture  of  reality.  When  Shakespeare  grew 
weary  of  London  life,  he  drew  a  picture  of  life  in  the 
forest  of  Arden  in  his  As  You  Like  It  such  as  he  would 
have  liked  to  have  enjoyed.  Idealistic  literature  hence 
gives  us  an  insight  into  the  nature  of  the  author's  uncon- 
scious. His  constructed  air  castles  show  us  where  reality 
has  been  harsh  with  him.  It  is  true  all  literature  must  to 
some  extent  be  idealistic,  as  the  author  must  always  do 
some  selecting.  Idealism  will  never  die  out  in  literature. 
Man  is  an  idealist  by  nature;  every  man  who  has  day 
dreams  is  reconstructing  life  in  accordance  with  his  de- 
sires. 

There  is  always  a  large  element  in  the  population  that 
hearkens  back  to  its  childhood  days.  Even  our  most  in- 
tellectual people  like  to  divert  themselves  with  stories 
of  piracy,  battles,  sunken  treasures,  tales  of  the  sea,  of 
adventure  and  mystery.  The  people  who  love  romance 
go  back  in  their  reading  to  their  boyhood  days;  they  have 
in  their  unconscious,  primitive  emotions  that,  unable  to 


LITERARY  CRITICISM  i8i 

find  an  outlet  to-day  very  well,  refuse  to  remain  alto- 
gether repressed ;  they  get  satisfaction  by  seeing  pictures 
of  life  in  which  the  unconscious  thus  participates.  The 
perennial  interest  of  Robinson  Crusoe  and  Treasure  Is- 
land, of  Scott  and  Dumas,  of  the  sea  stories  of  Cooper 
and  Captain  Marryat,  of  the  detective  stories  of  Gabo- 
riau  and  Doyle,  is  due  to  the  fact  that  they  make  us 
young  again.  It  is  true  we  often  outgrow  some  of  these 
books  and  find  them  dull  in  later  life,  but  they  enchant 
many  of  us  at  all  ages  because  our  inherent  instincts 
from  savage  and  less  cultivated  people  can  only  be  kept 
repressed  by  being  given  a  feigned  instead  of  a  real  satis- 
faction. 

Old  legends  like  those  about  Achilles,  the  Wandering 
Jew,  the  Flying  Dutchman,  Charlemagne,  and  King  Ar- 
thur and  his  knights,  never  weary  us;  they  continue  to 
furnish  artists  and  writers  with  artistic  material.  Psy- 
choanalysis explains  the  love  we  feel  for  these  romances. 
We  have  never  quite  grown  out  of  either  the  barbar- 
ous or  boyish  state.  We  like  the  strange,  the  mar- 
vellous, the  mysterious,  for  this  was  specially  charac- 
teristic of  man  in  an  early  stage  and  of  the  boy.  We 
also  find  an  affinity  for  the  kind  of  life  our  ancestors  led. 
We  are  interested  in  tales  where  men  are  hunting  and 
fighting.  Man's  unconscious  loves  a  fight,  for  he  has 
always  fought  in  the  history  of  the  race.  He  is  fasci- 
nated by  danger  and  the  idea  of  overcoming  obstacles. 
And  he  wants  such  scenes  introduced  in  literature. 

Psychoanalysis  also  explains  the  affinity  that  we  have 
for  the  supernatural  in  literature.  Freud's  disciples,  like 
Rank  and  Abraham  and  Ricklin,  have  shown  in  The 
Myth  of  the  Birth  of  the  Hero,  in  Dreams  and  Myths, 
and  in  Wishfulmcnt  and  Fairy  Tales,  respectively,  that 
fairy  tales  are  to  be  interpreted  like  dreams  and  represent 


1 82    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

the  fulfilled  wishes  of  early  humanity.  The  child  who 
likes  fairy  tales  finds  his  own  wishes  satisfied  in  these 
tales  dealing  with  the  supernatural  and  improbable.  Even 
when  great  poets  make  use  of  the  supernatural  in  their 
work,  the  same  principles  of  wish  fulfilment  are  there. 
Faust  is  saved  in  Goethe's  poem,  Prometheus  is  released 
in  Shelley's  lyric  drama  and  the  Knight  of  the  Cross 
is  victorious  over  the  dragon  in  Spenser's  allegory.  The 
poems  give  us  the  fulfilled  wishes  of  the  modern  poets. 
True  the  modern  poet  introduces  advanced  ideas  of  his 
time  and  gives  different  interpretations  to  the  old  tales. 
But  we  still  love  the  supernatural  because  we  have  our 
limitations  with  reality. 

In  an  essay  on  Hans  Christian  Andersen  published  in 
1867  George  Brandes  showed  the  connection  between 
the  unconscious  and  the  nursery  tale.  Thus  he  antici- 
pated the  discoveries  of  Abraham,  Ricklin  and  Rank,  who 
noted  that  folk-lore  and  fairy  tales  are,  like  dreams, 
realised  wishes  of  the  unconscious  of  early  humanity, 
formulated  into  endurable  form.  Brandes  objected  to 
the  occasional  moral  tag  in  Andersen's  stories  "because 
the  nursery  story  is  the  realm  of  the  unconscious.  Not 
only  are  unconscious  beings  and  objects  the  leaders  of 
speech  in  it,  but  what  triumphs  and  is  glorified  in  the 
nursery  story  is  this  very  element  of  unconsciousness. 
And  the  nursery  story  is  right,  for  the  unconscious  ele- 
ment is  our  capital  and  the  source  of  our  strength." 
Brandes  shows  how  child  psychology  interests  us  all 
because  of  its  unconscious.  He  distinguished  the  changes 
brought  in  by  the  nineteenth  century  where  the  uncon- 
scious is  worshipped,  while  in  the  critical  eighteenth  cen- 
tury consciousness  alone  had  been  valued, 

Nietzsche  understood  that  the  romantic  life  of  our 
ancestors  and  their  ways  of  thinking  were  repeated  by 


LITERARY  CRITICISM  183 

us  in  our  dreams.  He  wrote  in  his  Human  All  Too 
Human,  Vol.  i,  pp.  23-26:  "The  perfect  distinctions  of 
all  dreams — representations,  which  pre-suppose  absolute 
faith  in  their  reality,  recall  the  conditions  that  apper- 
tain to  primitive  man,  in  whom  hallucination  was  ex- 
traordinarily frequent,  and  sometime  simultaneously 
seized  entire  communities,  entire  nations.  Therefore,  in 
sleep  and  in  dreams  we  once  more  carry  out  the  task 
of  early  humanity.  ...  I  hold,  that  as  man  now  still 
reasons  in  dreams,  so  men  reasoned  also  when  awake 
through  thousands  of  years;  the  first  cause  which  oc- 
curred to  the  mind  to  explain  anything  that  required  an 
explanation,  was  sufficient  and  stood  for  truth  .  .  .  this 
ancient  element  in  human  nature  still  manifests  itself 
in  our  dreams,  for  it  is  the  foundation  upon  which  the 
higher  reason  has  developed  and  still  develops  in  every 
individual;  the  dream  carries  us  back  into  the  remote 
conditions  of  human  culture,  and  provides  a  ready  means 
of  understanding  them  better.  Dream-thinking  is  now 
so  easy  to  us  because  during  immense  periods  of  human 
development  we  have  been  so  well  drilled  in  this  form 
of  fantastic  and  cheap  explanation,  by  means  of  the  first 
agreeable  notions.  In  so  far,  dreaming  is  a  recreation  of 
the  brain,  which  by  day  has  to  satisfy  the  stern  demands 
of  thought,  as  they  are  laid  down  by  the  higher  culture." 
Supernatural  phenomena,  however,  in  our  contempo- 
rary literature  savour  of  imitation  and  the  artificial. 
Writers  do  not  as  a  rule  believe  in  the  supernatural  while 
the  creators  of  the  old  fairy  tales  did.  From  so  fine  a 
poet  as  Yeats,  who  is  said  to  believe  in  fairies,  we  get 
literature  that  is  both  sincere  and  artistic.  We  have  a 
beautiful  ideal  reconstruction  of  the  world  in  such  a  play 
as  The  Land  of  Heart's  Desire.  Here  the  dream  prin- 
ciple is  still  at  work. 


1 84    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

Among  the  fairy  tales  of  our  day  are  those  centring 
around  psychic  phenomena  and  reporting  the  conversa- 
tions of  the  dead.  They  are  written  because  they  repre- 
sent the  writer's  wishes  to  cor^municate  with  the  dead 
and  to  prove  that  we  do  not  die.  They  are  needed  by 
some  in  an  era  of  exact  science  and  a  great  war  as 
old  folk  lore  was  needed  in  its  time.  Needless  to  say 
this  does  not  speak  well  for  the  intellects  of  the  writ- 
ers of  these  spiritualistic  works.  We  make  something 
occur  because  we  want  it  to  transpire.  Lodge's  Raymond 
is  one  of  the  fairy  tales  of  recent  times  and  it  has  a 
genuineness  because  the  author,  to  the  amazement  of 
many  of  us,  believes  those  talks  with  his  son  actually 
took  place.  The  book  is  really  a  commentary  on  his 
pathetic  state  of  mind  after  the  death  of  his  son,  and  is 
his  dream  of  hope. 

But  realistic  literature  is  after  all  in  the  ascendant,  for 
it  tells  us  of  what  we  experience  in  our  own  life.  Don 
Quixote  showed  us  that  love  for  books  dealing  with 
dreams  and  impossibilities  may  help  to  make  one  mad. 
Men  are  interested  in  their  inner  struggles  and  in  the 
problems  of  the  day.  Books  treating  of  these  have  re- 
placed considerably  the  old  romances  as  serious  litera- 
ture. 

Romantic  and  idealistic  works  are  like  dreams,  frag- 
ments of  the  psychic  life  of  the  race  when  it  was  young. 

n 

The  literary  works  that  we  like  best  are  those  which 
tell  of  the  frustration  of  wishes  like  our  own.  We  prefer 
to  read  about  troubles  like  those  we  have  suffered,  to 
lose  ourselves  in  the  dreams  and  fantasies  built  up  by 


LITERARY  CRITICISM  185 

authors,  akin  to  those  we  have  conjured  up  in  our  own 
imagination. 

We  prefer  a  book  that  apologises  for  us,  that  tells  of 
strivings  and  repressions  such  as  we  have  experienced. 
We  get  a  sort  of  pleasure  then  out  of  painful  works,  in 
which  our  sorrows  and  wants  are  put  into  artistic  form, 
so  as  to  evoke  them  again  in  us.  It  depends  often  on  the 
character  of  our  repression  as  to  the  nature  of  the  books 
we  like.  If  we  have  overthrown  the  authority  of  our 
fathers  or  experienced  a  painful  love  repression  because 
we  were  hampered  by  social  laws,  if  we  have  broken  with 
our  religious  friends  or  been  crushed  by  some  moneyed 
powers,  we  may  become  of  a  revolutionary  trend  of  mind 
and  hence  prefer  writers  with  radical  opinions.  In  our 
time  there  have  arisen  a  number  of  geniuses  who  voiced 
such  opinions;  having  experienced  repressions  on  account 
of  the  customs  of  society,  they  sang  and  wrote  of  those 
repressions  and  attacked  those  customs.  The  great  love 
felt  by  the  young  man  who  does  not  fit  into  the  social 
order,  for  writers  like  Whitman,  Ibsen,  Nietzsche,  Shaw, 
and  others,  is  because  these  writers  approve  an  individual- 
ism that  he  seeks  to  cultivate.  He  who  is  grieved  by  the 
tyranny  of  the  philistine  and  the  bourgeois,  the  hypocrite 
and  the  puritan,  finds  himself  consoled  by  writers  who 
were  also  victims  of  such  tyranny. 

If  we  are  somewhat  more  neurotic  than  the  average 
person,  or  even  abnormal,  we  go  to  the  writers  who  are 
neurotic  and  abnormal.  Why  did  Baudelaire  love  Poe 
so  much?  Because  he  saw  in  him  another  Baudelaire,  a 
dreamer  out  of  accord  with  reality,  a  victim  of  drink  and 
drugs,  a  sufferer  at  the  hands  of  women,  an  artist  loving 
beauty  and  refusing  to  be  a  reformer.  Hence  he  trans- 
lated Poe's  works,  swore  to  read  him  daily,  and  imi- 
tated him.  Baudelaire's  unconscious  recognised  a  brother 


i86    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

sufferer  in  Poe;  he  wanted  to  have  the  same  ideal  condi- 
tions Poe  imagined  in  his  dreams;  he  suffered  from  the 
same  neuroses  that  Poe  suffered.  These  two  writers  be- 
came the  idols  of  the  French  decadent  writers,  and  Huys- 
mans,  Mallarme  and  others  loved  them.  The  French 
decadents  found  affinities  with  ancient  authors,  especially 
the  Roman  poets  of  the  Silver  Age,  Petronius  and  Apu- 
leius.  Oscar  Wilde,  Dowson  and  Arthur  Symons  in  our 
literature  belong  to  the  group  who  found  themselves  in 
harmony  with  the  French  decadents. 

Literary  influences  are  due  to  definite  reasons  and  fol- 
low regular  laws.  Though  sometimes  authors  appeal  to 
us  who  are  just  the  opposite  of  ourselves,  we,  as  a  rule, 
love  those  writers  who  write  of  our  own  unconscious 
wishes. 

What  is  the  secret  of  the  universal  appeal  of  Hamlet? 
Is  it  not  because  many  of  us,  like  him,  have 'been  in  con- 
flict wherein  we  could  not  act  because  there  was  an  ex- 
ternal obstacle?  Dr.  Ernest  Jones  found  a  reason  for 
Hamlet's  inability  to  act  in  an  unconscious  feeling  of 
guilty  love  for  his  mother.  He  was  jealous  of  his  uncle, 
the  murderer  of  his  father,  and  also  the  successful  rival 
to  Hamlet  in  his  mother's  affections.  This  psychoanaly- 
tic interpretation  made  by  Dr.  Ernest  Jones  adds  a  new 
element  to  the  old  theory  of  Hamlet's  struggle  with  fate. 
Hamlet  has  given  rise  to  a  series  of  characters  in  litera- 
ture characterised  by  inaction,  by  thinking  and  not  doing. 
Russian  literature,  with  its  Rudins  and  Oblomovs,  has 
recognised  in  this  portrayal  by  Shakespeare  a  common 
Russian  type.  Hamlet,  nevertheless,  had  good  reason 
for  not  being  able  to  act,  and  finally  did  act,  though  he 
made  a  bungle  of  it  all. 

Byron  and  Shelley  have  had  more  imitators  and  lovers 
than  any  of  the  poets  of  England  of  their  time.    We  know 


I 


LITERARY  CRITICISM  187 

the  influence  of  each  of  them  on  Tennyson  and  Browning 
respectively,  though  the  Victorians  later  departed  from 
the  footsteps  of  their  masters  and  became  conservative. 
But  the  causes  that  made  Heine,  Leonardi,  De  Musset 
and  Pushkin  love  Byron  were  the  same  as  those  which 
drew  to  Shelley,  the  republican  melodist  Swinburne, 
James  Thomson,  the  atheist  author  of  the  City  of  Dread- 
ful Night,  Francis  Thompson,  the  Catholic  maker  of 
beautiful  forms  out  of  his  own  sufferings,  and  the  un- 
happy lyricist  Beddoes,  who  committed  suicide.  The 
later  poets  found  Byron  and  Shelley  singers  of  uncon- 
scious wishes  of  their  own,  portrayers  of  moods  and  sor- 
rows like  those  they  felt  and  constructors  of  means  of 
ridding  the  world  of  such  griefs  by  plans  they  largely 
approved. 

The  reason  for  the  universal  appeal  of  the  Bible  is 
because  of  the  variety  in  this  library  of  books;  there  is 
always  some  chapter  that  expresses  our  unconscious 
wishes. 

The  Old  Testament,  especially,  satisfies  our  uncon- 
scious. This  is  due  to  the  psalms  voicing  human  sorrow, 
and  the  prophecies  of  Isaiah  ringing  with  a  passionate 
love  for  justice,  to  the  pleasant  tales  that  appeal  to  our 
youthful  fancy  like  those  of  Joseph  and  his  brethren, 
and  Ruth,  and  the  philosophical  drama  of  Job,  in  whose 
sufferings  we  see  our  own,  to  the  epicureanism  and  mel- 
ancholy in  Ecclesiasticus,  and  the  military  exploits  of 
Joshua  and  David.  The  Bible  appeals  as  literature  to 
many  who  do  not  believe  in  dogma  or  miracles,  to  many 
who  find  parts  of  it  cruel  and  unjust  because  it  is  a  va- 
ried collection  of  books,  and,  as  a  result,  the  unconscious 
wishes  and  means  of  gratification  of  some  of  the  writers 
must  meet  our  own,  separated  as  we  are  from  them  by 
thousands  of  years. 


i88    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

When  we  read  that  Wordsworth  soothed  De  Quincey 
and  John  Stuart  Mill,  and  had  a  tonic  effect  on  Arnold, 
so  that  he  became  a  leading  disciple,  that  Shaw  based 
his  wit  and  philosophy  on  Samuel  Butler,  an  almost  for- 
gotten contemporary,  that  Brandes  found  an  affinity  in 
writers  like  Shakespeare  and  Ibsen,  we  are  aware  that 
•the  process  is  the  same:  the  later  author  found  some 
earlier  one  who  especially  expressed  his  unconscious 
wishes. 

Take  the  literary  influences  in  literature,  that  of 
Smollet  on  Dickens,  that  of  Dickens  on  Daudet  and  Dos- 
toievsky and  Bret  Harte,  that  of  Balzac  on  Flaubert,  of 
Flaubert  on  Maupassant  and  Zola,  of  Carlyle  on  Ruskin 
and  Froude,  of  Kipling  on  Jack  London.  All  this  means 
that  the  author  influenced  found  in  his  master  a  kindred 
sufferer  and  a  kindred  dreamer. 

Literature  gives  each  writer  or  reader  the  means  of 
choosing  his  own  father  as  it  were.  When  a  man  says 
he  found  his  whole  life  changed  by  a  certain  book,  it  is 
equivalent  to  his  saying  that  the  book  has  merely  made 
him  recognise  his  unconscious;  it  did  not  put  anything 
there  that  was  not  there  before.  The  book  had  a  psy- 
choanalytic effect  on  him;  it  taught  him  to  look  at  his 
unconscious  objectively;  it  brought  to  consciousness 
something  that  was  repressed.  If  the  resistance  to  per- 
ceiving that  unconscious  had  not  been  overcome  the 
book  could  have  had  no  effect.  We  hate  a  book  often 
because  the  censorship  in  us  is  too  great.  When  John 
A.  Symonds  describes  the  effects  of  Whitman's  Leaves  of 
Grass,  which  he  says  influenced  him  more  than  any  other 
book  except  the  Bible,  he  meant  Whitman  cured  him  of 
neurosis,  brought  out  his  repressed  feelings  and  made 
him  aware  of  his  inner  wants  and  told  him  how  to  satisfy 
them. 


LITERARY  CRITICISM  189 

The  saying,  "Tell  me  what  you  read  and  I'll  tell  you 
what  you  are,"  is  true.  People  differ  about  the  qualities 
of  books  because  their  own  unconscious  wishes  have  been 
met  differently  in  these  books. 


in 

What  then  is  the  cause  of  literary  movements  and  what 
stamps  the  peculiarities  of  a  literary  age,  if  all  writers 
draw  on  their  unconscious?  Why  does  a  Pope  appear  in 
the  age  of  Queen  Anne  and  a  Wordsworth  at  the  end  of 
the  reign  of  George  IV?  Why  didn't  Shakespeare  write 
in  the  Elizabethan  age  like  Charles  Dickens  in  the  Vic- 
torian period?  How  account  for  the  warlike  character 
of  the  Saxon  epic  Beowulf,  for  the  religious  tone  of  her 
first  poet,  Caedmon ;  for  the  interest  in  chivalry  and  alle- 
gory in  the  Faerie  Queen?  What  made  Bunyan  so  ab- 
sorbed in  salvation,  in  Pilgrim's  Progress,  at  the 
time  the  Restoration  dramatists  were  steeped  in  ex- 
hibitionism and  immorality?  What  are  the  causes  of  the 
notes  of  moral  revolt  in  Byron  and  Shelley,  of  the  roman- 
ticism of  Scott,  the  realism  of  George  Eliot?  If  the  un- 
conscious is  alike  in  all  people,  and  genius  records  the 
ideas  and  emotions  formed  by  personal  repressions,  it 
would  seem  the  works  of  all  geniuses  who  have  had  simi- 
lar repressions  should  be  alike,  irrespective  of  the  ages  in 
which  they  lived. 

Literary  historians  and  philosophers  have  accounted 
for  the  various  changes  in  literary  taste  fairly  satisfac- 
torily, although  they  have  often  omitted  from  their  in- 
vestigations the  factor  of  the  personal  experiences  and 
idiosyncrasies  of  the  author,  and  have  emphasised  too 
strongly  the  importance  of  the  predominant  ideas  of  the 
age.    Yet  no  author  starts  out  to  express  the  spirit  of  his 


190    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

age.  He  gives  vent  to  his  unconscious  which  he  sup- 
presses more  or  less,  and  colours,  in  accordance  with  the 
literary  fashion  prevailing.  His  unconscious  appears  in 
a  background  of  the  literary  machinery  and  ideas  of  the 
time.  Since  in  our  unconscious  are  present  all  the 
emotions  man  has  had,  different  events  may  make  any 
of  them  burst  forth. 

On  account  of  the  recent  war,  many  dormant  emotions 
were  reanimated  in  us  and  appeared  in  our  literature. 
People  found  that  Homer's  Iliad  and  other  ancient  war- 
like epics  appealed  to  them  more  than  these  did  in  times 
of  peace.  Literature  in  war  times  becomes  more  related 
to  primitive  hterature  where  the  hero  is  the  successful, 
brave  warrior.  The  military  and  patriotic  spirit  had  not 
been  extinct,  but  quiescent. 

If  Milton  had  lived  in  the  eighteen  nineties  he  would 
probably  have  written  problem  plays  and  novels  instead 
of  Paradise  Lost.  He  was  unhappily  married,  but  the 
fashion  of  his  age  was  not  to  create  imaginative  works 
based  on  justifiable  causes  for  seeking  a  divorce.  He  did 
write  on  the  subject  of  divorce,  however,  and  his  views 
horrified  his  contemporaries.  He  stood  alone.  Had  the 
tendencies  of  the  time  been  to  make  works  of  the  imag- 
ination out  of  situations  in  which  he  was  personally 
placed,  he  would  have  no  doubt  done  so.  In  his  uncon- 
scious he  felt  about  women  and  divorce  much  as  Strind- 
berg  did.  He  retained  during  the  Restoration  his  early 
Puritanism  and  religious  interests,  and  hence  published 
Paradise  Lost.  Even  here  he  found  an  opportunity 
for  expressing  special  views  about  women  and  describing 
his  own  forlorn  condition. 

Again  it  is  likely  that  Shakespeare  in  our  generation 
would  not  have  written  much  differently  from  Ibsen  or 
Hauptmann.    The  marriage  problem  interested  him  also, 


LITERARY  CRITICISM  191 

for  he  was  unhappily  married  and  loved  another.  He 
expressed  his  bitterness  towards  woman  in  his  sonnets, 
in  his  characterisations  of  historical  characters  like  Cleo- 
patra and  Cressida.  But  he  wrote  no  special  work  occu- 
pied with  the  theme  of  the  hard  restrictions  placed  by  so- 
ciety upon  the  lives  of  some  unhappily  married  people. 
A  work  of  this  kind  would  have  been  almost  a  monstrosity 
in  his  age.  Shakespeare  could  not  have  written  exactly 
as  Ibsen  did,  for  though  in  their  unconscious  they  were 
alike,  each  had  different  traditions  and  backgrounds  to 
work  on.  No  writer  ignores  totally  prevailing  literary 
fashions  or  tastes. 

It  is  not  my  purpose  to  go  into  the  causes  of  changes 
in  tastes,  traditions,  ideas,  movements.  That  subject  has 
been  dealt  with  often.  Economic  reasons  are  great  factors 
in  developing  new  literary  periods  and  movements,  yet 
also  have  much  to  do  with  this  feeling  of  reaction  against 
a  preceding  age.  The  artificiality  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury gave  way  to  the  love  of  nature  of  the  nineteenth. 
The  demand  for  reason,  wit  and  classicism  in  literature 
disappeared  gradually,  to  be  replaced  by  imagination,  the 
utilisation  of  emotion  and  romanticism.  Wordsworth  is  a 
reaction  to  Pope  (even  though  Wordsworth's  nature  wor- 
ship concealed  his  sex  interest).  His  way  was  prepared 
by  other  writers  of  nature  like  Thomson,  Collins,  Gold- 
smith, Gray,  Cowper,  Crabbe,  Blake  and  Bums.  The 
immortality  and  exhibitionism  of  Congreve,  Wycherly, 
Farquar,  Van  Brugh  and  Dryden  in  the  Restoration 
period  were  a  reaction  to  the  Puritanism  of  the  age  of 
Cromwell.  Bunyan,  because  of  his  early  training  and 
physical  and  mental  condition,  however,  still  clung  to 
his  early  puritanism. 

Yet  Pope  and  Wordsworth  were  each  men  of  their  ages 
and  wrote  in  accordance  with  the  rising  literary  traditions 


192    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

of  the  time,  though  they  also  altered  these.  For  the  imita- 
tive instinct  is  powerful  and  present  in  the  most  original 
writers.  Shakespeare's  plays  are  much  like  those  of  Mar- 
lowe and  Fletcher,  though  greater.  His  "plagiarisms," 
like  those  of  Milton,  were  extensive.  It  is  true  that  often 
one  man  sets  the  standard  for  a  literary  age,  but  he 
usually  has  predecessors.  His  influence  is  due  to  the  fact 
that  he  strikes  responsive  chords  in  the  unconscious  of 
many  people  of  his  time,  and  the  circle  of  his  admirers 
and  imitators  increases,  so  as  to  make  him  an  authority. 

The  realistic  novels  of  George  Eliot  appeared  after 
England  wearied  of  the  fanciful  fictions  of  Walter  Scott. 
A  generation  passed  by  before  the  reaction  set  in  with 
full  force.  Both  writers  wrote  as  they  did,  largely  in 
obedience  to  the  tendencies  of  their  times,  upon  which 
they  reacted  and  were  reacted  upon.  They  wrote  be- 
cause of  personal  repressions.  Their  methods  of  expres- 
sion were  different,  because  of  a  desire  to  comply  some- 
what with  literary  traditions.  Romanticism  was  fashion- 
able in  1830,  while  realism  was  in  the  air  in  i860. 

Those  readers  who  think  that  these  views  do  not  give 
sufficient  credit  to  writers  for  originality  in  literary 
expression  should  remember  that  common  literary  forms 
are  followed  by  writers  v;ho  may  nevertheless  be  original 
in  ideas.  Only  the  student  of  literary  history  realises  the 
power  of  literary  imitation. 

Take  the  thousands  of  pastorals  that  flooded  European 
literature  from  Theocrities  to  Pope;  most  of  them,  ex- 
cept Spenser's  Astrophel,  Milton's  Lycidas,  and  a  few 
others  were  flat  and  unprofitable.  Note  the  numerous 
sonnets  written  since  the  form  was  brought  over  from 
Italy  by  Wyatt  and  Surrey.  The  extensive  use  of  the 
sonnet  proves  poets  are  imitative. 

Recall  the  allegories  with  which  mediaeval  literature 


LITERARY  CRITICISM  193 

abounded.  Even  the  great  short  stories  of  Hawthorne, 
who  was  much  influenced  by  Bunyan  and  Spenser, 
show  traces  of  mediaeval  forms.  Literary  tradition  is 
certainly  stronger  than  originality.  And  the  thousands 
of  authors  of  our  day  who  write  novels  and  short  stories, 
would  in  mediaeval  times  have  written  allegories. 

The  ideas  and  mode  of  expression  change,  and  hence 
makes  much  of  the  old  literature  obsolete.  But  many 
emotions  remain  eternal.  We  can  still  feel  with  Sappho 
and  the  Troubadours,  whereas  we  find  our  intellect  in- 
sulted by  some  of  the  religious  ideas  versified  by  Dante 
and  Milton;  although  the  passages  describing  secular 
emotions  win  our  admiration. 

When  we  must  look  for  an  author's  unconscious  buried 
in  the  literary  trappings  of  his  day  we  weary  of  the  task 
and  dismiss  his  work.  Why  can  we  not  read  the  thou- 
sands of  pastorals  and  allegories  of  the  mediaeval 
writers?  Is  it  not  largely  because  of  the  feeble  intellects, 
and  spirit  of  imitation  present,  because  of  the  absence 
of  the  personal  note?  The  unconscious  is  buried  too 
deeply  in  rigmarole.  The  works  have  a  psychological  and 
historical  but  not  artistic  value.  The  religious  and 
romantic  instincts  in  many  of  us  are  buried  too  deeply  in 
our  unconscious,  and  hence  we  do  not  sympathise  with 
those  works. 

Those  poets  live  who  have  been  most  personal.  The 
Roman  poets,  Horace,  Catullus,  Titullus,  Propertius, 
Ovid,  Lucretius,  were  personal.  Even  the  Mneid  reveals 
the  soul  of  Virgil  in  the  story  of  ^neas  and  Dido. 

The  unconscious  is  present  in  all  literature,  and  the  lit- 
erary movement  but  colours  it  and  gives  occasion  for  the 
expression  or  censorship  of  certain  phases  of  it.  Puritan 
writers  are  not  in  their  unconscious  any  different  from  the 
"immoral"  ones;  only  the  latter  relax  the  censor  and  give 


194    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

full  play  to  the  unconscious,  when  a  liberal  age  like  that 
of  the  Restoration  or  the  Renaissance,  permits  it. 

Hence,  though  all  writers  draw  on  their  unconscious 
and  base  their  work  on  their  personal  repressions,  authors 
of  one  age  differ  in  manner  and  substance  from  those  of 
another,  not  because  the  unconscious  is  different  (which 
it  is  not),  but  because  it  is  fashionable  to  express  only 
certain  features  of  it  in  one  age;  because  writers  have  an 
instinctive  tendency  to  comply  with  the  literary  fashions 
of  their  age;  because  the  time  spirit  colours  and  censors 
those  elements  of  the  unconscious  which  appear  in  the 
literary  product. 

IV 

Freud  has  shown  in  his  Psychopathology  of  Every- 
Day  Life  that  we  tend  to  forget  the  things  that  are 
displeasing  to  us,  that  unconsciously  we  avoid  what  has 
once  caused  us  pain.  The  objection  has  been  raised  to 
this  theory  that  as  a  matter  of  fact  it  is  the  painful  things 
that  we  never  forget,  and  that  these  impress  themselves 
most  on  us.  Such  critics  might  have  taken  it  for  granted 
that  the  scientist  who  laid  down  the  principles  that  the 
neuroses  date  from  the  earliest  painful  love  experiences 
which  are  never  forgotten,  but  merely  repressed  and  un- 
conscious, would  not  have  overlooked  their  objections. 
Certainly  we  do  not  forget  painful  things,  but  nature  has 
so  provided  that  we  have  a  tendency  to  repress  into  our 
unconscious  annoying  events  and  go  on  our  way  as  if 
they  had  never  happened ;  only  in  symptomatic  acts,  mis- 
takes, slips  of  the  tongue  and  otherwise  do  we  betray  our- 
selves. The  man  whose  wife  has  lied  never  forgets  it  if 
he  has  loved  her.  But  if  he  has,  let  us  say,  been  slighted 
by  a  person  who  has  not  been  playing  a  principal  part  in 


LITERARY  CRITICISM  195 

his  life,  he  will  go  on  living  as  if  that  person  had  never 
existed  for  him.  He  may  unconsciously  avoid  the  street 
where  that  man  lives,  and  forget  about  him,  until  some 
occasion  may  arise  when  he  may  betray  his  disHke  of  that 
person  in  a  manner  he  never  intended;  the  action  is, 
nevertheless,  the  voice  of  his  unconscious.  Life  would 
be  unbearable  if  we  always  had  before  us  pictures  of  our 
past  sufferings.  In  fact,  a  neurosis  is  brought  about  by 
the  fact  that  we  don't  forget.  As  Freud  said,  the  hysteric 
suffers  from  reminiscences  or  fantasies  based  on  painful 
events  in  the  past. 

The  principle  of  unconscious  avoiding  of  the  painful  is 
at  the  basis  of  the  rejection  of  the  world's  great  books, 
both  old  and  new.  Literary  criticism  is  influenced  by 
our  tendency  to  ignore  what  causes  us  pain. 

The  world  has  not  always  realised  the  reason  for  the 
opposition  to  a  new  great  thinker,  or  an  advanced  idea  or 
book.  We  have  contented  ourselves  by  asserting  that  the 
world  was  not  yet  advanced  enough  intellectually  to  per- 
ceive their  greatness.  We  know,  however,  that  often  the 
most  intellectual  people  of  an  age  are  the  first  to  reject 
a  new  idea.  Men  like  Carlyle  and  Lord  Beaconsfield 
would  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  theory  of  evolution. 
Darwin's  chief  opponents  were  among  the  leading  biolo- 
gists of  the  time. 

The  fact  of  one's  being  born  in  an  earlier  generation 
from  the  man  who  propounds  the  new  idea,  is  a  large  fac- 
tor in  the  rejection  of  it.  Another  unconscious  reason  for 
the  repudiation  of  the  new  idea  is  that  it  would  cause  us 
pain  if  it  were  true.  We  would  also  feel  that  we  had  been 
dupes  all  our  lives.  We  had  been  smugly  following  a 
pleasant  delusion  that  brought  us  some  happiness  and 
suddenly  we  see  our  bubble  pricked.  We  had  been  fol- 
lowing a  course  of  thinking  and  conduct,  that  is  now  im- 


196    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

peached  by  the  new  discovery.  If  a  man  has  written 
several  books  on  miracles,  original  sin,  and  other  dogmas. 
in  which  he  believes,  and  has  spent  all  his  life  studying 
the  subjects,  he  could  not  accept  a  book  which  rejects  his 
ideas;  it  would  mean  that  he  had  wasted  his  life.  His 
aversion  to  concur  with  the  conclusions  of  that  new  book 
is  nature's  means  of  preventing  him  from  suffering  great 
pain;  it  is  a  defence  action.  If  a  preacher  has  advised 
thousands  of  couples  who  were  unhappy  not  to  divorce 
and  not  to  remarry  some  one  with  whom  they  might  have 
been  happy,  he  would  be  the  last  man  to  see  the  great- 
ness of  a  work  that  shows  divorce  may  be  a  humane 
and  beneficial  act  in  some  cases,  for  it  would  mean  that 
he  would  have  to  admit  he  has  ruined  the  lives  of  many 
people. 

The  real  objection  by  man  to  the  Copernican  theory 
was  that  it  reflected  on  his  religion  and  his  vanity ;  it  was 
annoying  to  hear  that  the  earth  was  not  the  centre  of 
the  universe.  The  Darwinian  theory  was  a  still  more 
painful  discovery  because  it  placed  man  among  the  de- 
scendants of  animals  and  taught  that  he  was  a  by-product 
like  them.  The  facts,  however,  in  both  cases,  were  so 
overwhelming  that  many  managed  to  accept  them  and 
still  keep  their  religious  beliefs  intact,  for  these  still  give 
consolation.  In  spite  of  Copernicus  and  Darwin,  we  stilf 
live  as  if  the  world  were  the  centre  of  the  universe  and 
man  its  most  divine  product. 

The  most  personal  and  human  argument  in  favour  of  a 
belief  in  personal  immortality  of  the  soul,  of  communion 
with  the  dead  or  a  Providential  Personal  God,  is  that  life 
would  be  sad  if  these  theories  were  not  true;  they  must 
hence  be  true.  Tennyson,  in  his  In  Memoriam,  has  the 
popular  attitude.  If  life  didn't  live  for  ever  more,  then 
"earth  is  darkness  at  the  core  and  dust  and  ashes  all 


LITERARY  CRITICISM  197 

that  is."  But  our  wishes  must  recede  before  logic  and 
facts. 

A  great  idea,  then,  is  not  accepted  if  its  conclusions  are 
painful  to  us  when  a  more  pleasant  idea  has  prevailed; 
every  idea  is  rejected  when  its  possible  truth  would  mean 
that  we  have  been  living  in  error  and  wasting  our  lives. 
New  ideas  are  nearly  always  made  to  fit  in  with  the  old 
views. 

The  theory  of  evolution  became  acceptable  only  when 
it  was  demonstrated  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  religionists 
what  at  first  did  not  seem  apparent  to  them,  that  it  in- 
terfered neither  with  a  belief  in  a  personal  God,  Chris- 
tianity nor  the  immortality  of  the  soul. 

Literary  men  who  are  advanced  are  admired  often  for 
qualities  that  do  not  constitute  their  real  greatness.  The 
conservatives  praise  the  daring  poet  for  his  style,  after 
he  has  made  his  way;  or  they  select  a  few  of  the  minor 
ideas  he  champions  and  ignore  the  greater  ones.  They 
will  not  accept  the  Hardy  who  wrote  Jude  the  Obscure, 
but  the  Hardy  of  Far  From  the  Maddening  Crowd;  they 
will  admire  the  early  harmless  lyrics  of  John  Davidson 
instead  of  the  profound  testaments  and  later  plays,  whose 
real  greatness  was  shown  by  Dr.  Hayim  Fineman  in  his 
monograph  on  John  Davidson."^  They  praise  Swinburne 
for  his  melody,  Ibsen  for  his  technique  and  Shaw  for  his 
wit,  but  can  see  no  intellectual  value  either  in  the  Songs 
Before  Sunrise,  or  Peer  Gynt,  or  Man  and  Superman. 
They  overlook  the  value  of  Byron's  Don  Juan  or  Cain, 
because  these  works  contain  ideas  that  hurt  most,  and  in- 
stead they  lavish  compliments  on  harmless  descriptions 
like  the  address  to  the  ocean,  or  the  account  of  the  battle 
of  Waterloo.  They  like  Shelley's  lyrics  and  see  nothing 
in  his  ideas. 

*  Published  by  the  University  of  Pennsylvania. 


1 98    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

The  "conspiracy  of  silence"  that  has  often  greeted 
many  great  men  was  at  times  unconscious.  People  are 
not  prone  by  nature  to  investigate  something  which  might 
bring  painful  results.  They  prefer  to  let  it  alone  alto- 
gether. The  motive  of  ignoring  a  great  book  is  founded 
on  one  of  displeasure.  Hence  morbid  and  pessimistic 
books,  revolutionary  ideas,  iconoclastic  views  on  reli- 
gion, morals  or  philosophy,  new  discoveries  in  science, 
encounter  opposition.  We  do  not  want  to  be  disturbed 
in  our  complacency.  For  the  disturbance  is,  after  all, 
made  by  those  who  do  not  fit  into  the  old  order;  their 
own  discoveries  are  defence  processes.  But  gradually  it 
is  seen  that  these  writers  express  universal  wants. 

The  opposition  met  by  all  investigations  in  the  subject 
of  sex,  is  an  example  of  man's  effort  to  thrust  painful 
things  out  of  sight.  The  barrier  raised  against  Freud 
himself  rises  largely  from  three  leading  ideas  of  his,  those 
on  the  sexual  significance  of  symbols  in  dreams  and  the 
attributing  of  neurosis  to  sexual  causes,  and  the  theory 
that  the  infant  has  a  sexual  life  of  its  own.  In  spite  of 
his  broad  use  of  the  term  sexual  and  his  many  demonstra- 
tions of  the  truth  of  these  ideas,  man  does  not  want  to 
believe  them.  Jung  and  Adler,  who  lay  little  stress  on  the 
sexual  element,  have  made  the  theory  of  psychoanalysis 
acceptable  to  many;  but  Freud  objects  to  the  use  of  the 
word  psychoanalysis  by  disciples  who  have  taken  out  of 
his  theory  something  he  considers  essential. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

KEATS 'S  PERSONAL  LOVE  POEMS 


Stress  has  never  been  laid  on  the  real  unconscious 
origins  of  some  of  Keats's  best  poems.  We  know  that  his 
sad  love  affair  with  Fanny  Brawne,  who  coquetted  with 
him,  inspired  a  few  poems  directly  addressed  to  her;  it 
is  also  indisputable  that  Keats  had  her  in  mind  when 
he  wrote  La  Belle  Dame  Sans  Merci,  he  was  telling  of 
his  own  fate  in  the  account  of  the  knight's  mishap.  But 
it  is  rarely  recognised  that  emotions  connected  with 
Fanny  Brawne  inspired  his  two  most  famous  odes,  the 
one  to  the  Nightingale  and  the  other  to  the  Grecian  urn; 
that  the  tale  of  Lamia,  which  ranks  among  his  best  poems, 
is  a  symbolic  description  of  his  attitude  towards  Miss 
Brawne,  and  that  her  presence  is  felt  in  other  poems 
and  sonnets  by  Keats.  He  thought  of  her  constantly, 
and  he  could  scarcely  write  a  love  poem  but  she  some- 
how or  other  stepped  into  the  pages.  When  we  compare 
these  and  other  poems  to  the  letters  that  he  had  written 
to  her  about  the  same  time,  we  will  find  that  often  the 
same  emotions  inspired  both. 

Keats  met  Miss  Brawne  in  the  fall  of  1818,  when  he 
was  twenty-three  years  old.  He  quarrelled  with  her  in 
February,  1819,  but,  nevertheless,  was  her  declared  lover 
in  the  spring.  His  first  love  letter  that  we  have  to  her  is 
dated  July  i,  1819,  and  the  last  about  May,  1820.   In 

199 


200    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

the  spring  and  summer  of  1819  he  wrote  some  of  his  best 
poems,  and  he  showed  most  emphatically  the  repression 
of  his  emotions  by  the  coquetries  of  Fanny.  He  took  a 
walk  among  the  marbles  of  the  British  Museum,  in  Feb- 
ruary, 1 819,  and  three  months  later  penned  his  Ode  to 
a  Grecian  Urn.  In  the  latter  part  of  April  he  heard 
the  nightingale  in  Brown's  garden,  and  he  wrote  the 
famous  ode.  In  the  same  month  he  also  wrote  La  Belle 
Dame  Sans  Merci.  In  August  and  September  of  181 9 
he  worked  on  Lamia.  He  had  his  first  hemorrhage  in 
February,  1820,  left  England  in  September,  and  died  in 
Italy  February,  1821. 

Those  who  have  read  the  letters  to  Fanny  will  remem- 
ber with  what  anxiety  the  poet  wrote,  how  he  showed  his 
jealousy  and  complained  and  pleaded  without  pride.  In 
one  letter  dated  June  19,  1819,  he  said  he  would  resent 
having  his  heart  made  a  football,  that  Brown,  with  whom 
she  flirted,  was  doing  him  to  death  by  inches,  and  that  the 
air  of  a  room  from  which  Fanny  was  absent  was  un- 
healthy to  him.  "I  appeal  to  you  by  the  blood  of  that 
Christ  you  believe  in.  .  .  .  Do  not  write  to  me  if  you 
have  done  anything  this  month  which  it  would  have 
pained  me  to  have  seen."  In  October  he  writes,  "Love 
is  my  religion — I  could  die  for  that;  I  could  die  for  you." 
The  letters  are  the  record  of  the  agony  of  a  man  who  is 
being  played  with  and  who  cries  out  in  helplessness.  He 
cannot  bear  seeing  her  smiling  with  others  or  dancing 
with  them.  Miss  Brawne  asserted  after  his  death  that 
she  did  not  regard  him  as  a  great  poet,  and  thought  it 
advisable  for  people  to  let  his  reputation  die.  It  is  also 
said  she  referred  to  him  as  the  foolish  poet  who  loved  her. 

Let  us  see  how  this  sad  affair  influenced  his  work. 

The  Keats  of  the  first  volume.  Poems,  181 7,  is  a  much 
different  person  from  the  Keats  of  the  Lamia  volume,  in 


KEATS 'S  PERSONAL  LOVE  POEMS        201 

1820.  The  three  intervening  years  had  brought  a  mad- 
dening love  affair,  a  fatal  disease  and  the  famous,  though 
not  as  once  thought  fatal  review,  attacking  Endymion. 
His  art  principles  remained  much  the  same.  With  grow- 
ing sorrow  he  worshipped  beauty  more  and  sought  in  it 
a  refuge  from  grief.  His  attitude  towards  women  and  life 
was  now  somewhat  different.  He  paid  woman  a  tribute 
in  the  poem  in  the  first  volume,  beginning  with  the  lines, 
"Woman!  I  behold  thee,"  etc.  But  he  had  not  yet  suf- 
fered from  a  Fanny  Brawne;  here  he  spoke  of  woman's 
being  "like  a  milk-white  lamb  that  bleats  for  man's  pro- 
tection." And  yet  before  he  was  twenty  he  may  have  had 
a  foreboding  that  his  fate  in  love  might  not  be  a  happy 
one.    In  the  poem.  To  Hope,  he  wrote: 

"Should  e'er  unhappy  love  my  bosom  pain, 
From    cruel    parents    or    relentless    fair; 
O  let  me  not  think  it  is  quite  in  vain 
To  sigh  out  sonnets   to  the  midnight  air." 

Alas  for  himself,  but  perhaps  (it  may  be  cruel  to  say) 
fortunately  for  the  lovers  of  literature,  those  sonnets  and 
other  poems  were  sighed  out  later! 

Before  we  can,  however,  quite  understand  his  sad  life 
and  the  nature  of  his  work  and  philosophy,  something 
must  be  said  about  his  relations  to  his  mother.  She  died 
from  consumption  when  he  was  past  fourteen.  Keats, 
who  was  her  favourite  child,  sat  up  nights,  mourn- 
ing her,  and  was  inconsolable;  he  would  hide  for 
days  under  his  master's  desk.  Once,  at  the 
age  of  five,  he  guarded  her  sick  room  with 
a  sword.  His  mother  re-married  a  year  after  her 
husband's  death,  when  the  poet  was  in  his  tenth  year. 
She  separated  from  her  second  husband  and  went  to  live 
with  her  mother.    Keats  then  had  a  guardian.    The  poet 


202    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

was  the  oldest  of  five  children,  and  was  a  seven  months' 
child.  All  this  is  significant.  The  CEdipus  Complex  was 
strong  in  the  poet.  He  was  not  only  deprived  of  his 
mother  early,  but  witnessed  her  marry  a  second  time. 
This  event  revived  the  babyish  jealousy  he  felt  of  his 
father,  and  made  him  unconsciously  hate  the  new  husband. 
He  looked  for  a  substitute  for  the  lost  mother  and  thought 
he  found  her  in  Fanny  Brawne,  and  then  be  learned  what 
grief  was.  He  loved  beauty  so  much  because  of  unre- 
quited love.  Some  poets,  like  Wordsworth,  seek  conso- 
lation in  nature  for  lack  of  love,  others  like  Byron  simply 
voice  their  woe  in  a  personal  note,  others  like  Shelley 
find  it  a  spur  to  spread  views  of  reform  in  connection 
with  the  marriage  institution.  Keats's  love  of  beauty 
has  a  strong  sexual  component.  His  unfulfilled  physical 
desires  were  sublimated  into  poems  worshipping  beauty. 
Art  was  his  refuge. 

We  are  now  prepared  to  trace  the  origins  of  some  of  his 
work.  Most  critics  saw  the  unconscious  allusions  in  the 
La  Belle  Dame  poem.  It  is  symbolic  of  himself  in 
the  snares  of  a  coquette.  There  is  an  allusion  to  an  old 
song  entitled  La  Belle  Dame  Sans  Merci  in  Keats's 
The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes  which  Porphyro  played  to  Made- 
line while  she  slept;  it  was  a  poem  composed  in  Pro- 
vence; and  we  all  know  that  most  of  the  love  poems  of 
the  Provengal  Troubadours  were  complaints  about  unre- 
quited love.  Keats's  poem  has  a  simple  plot.  A  knight 
tells  the  poet,  in  response  to  a  question  as  to  why  he 
was  so  woe-begone,  that  he  met  a  fairy  child  and  set  her 
on  his  pacing  steed.  She  claimed  to  love  him,  and  she 
lulled  him  to  sleep  and  he  dreamed  that  pale  kings  and 
princes  and  warriors  told  him  that  he  was  in  the  thrall 
of  a  girl  without  mercy.    They  were  evidently  also  her 


1 


KEATS'S  PERSONAL  LOVE  POEMS        203 

victims.  He  wakes  and  loiters  on  the  cold  hill  side, 
realising  that  he  was  her  victim. 

This  poem  was  written  within  a  few  months  before 
the  letter  to  Fanny  was  penned,  in  which  he  said  he  re- 
sented having  his  heart  made  a  football.  The  poem  cor- 
responds to  an  anxiety  dream.  Freud  tells  us  that  the 
contents  of  the  anxiety  dream  is  of  a  sexual  nature;  the 
libido  has  been  turned  away  from  its  object,  and,  not 
having  succeeded  in  being  applied,  has  been  transformed 
into  fear.  This  poem  is  a  good  proof  of  this  one  of  the 
least-understood  theories  of  Freud.  Keats  then  is  the 
knight  and  Fanny  is  the  fairy  child. 

The  nature  of  his  day  dreams  and  jealousy  appears  in 
the  Ode  to  Fanny,  a  posthumous  poem,  probably  not 
meant  for  publication.  It  contains  some  of  the  sub- 
stance of  his  letters  to  Fanny.  He  imagines  he  is  watch- 
ing Fanny  at  a  dance,  and  jealous  thoughts  come  to  him. 
"Who  now  with  greedy  looks  eats  up  my  feast?"  he  asks. 
His  only  remedy  is  to  write  poetry  to  ease  his  pain.  He 
says  to  Physician  Nature,  "O,  ease  my  heart  of  verse  and 
let  me  rest."  He  loves  her  so  much  he  cannot  bear  that 
any  one  profane  her  with  looks.  He  wants  her  wholly, 
her  thoughts  and  emotions.  The  poem  was  probably 
written  about  the  time  of  the  quarrel,  in  February,  18 19. 

Another  posthumous  poem  addressed  to  Fanny  is  the 
one  beginning  with  the  lines,  "What  can  I  do  to  drive 
away  remembrance  from  my  eyes?"  He  is  now  wishing 
he  were  free  from  love,  and  that  he  had  his  old  liberty. 
He  wants  to  devote  himself  to  his  muse  as  freely  as  he 
once  did.  He  thinks  of  wine  as  he  did  in  the  nightingale 
poem,  and  asks:  "Shall  I  gulp  wine?  No,  that  is  vulgar- 
ism." He  is  in  hell,  he  realises,  but  he  concludes  with  a 
wish  to  satisfy  his  physical  love  for  Fanny.  He  wants 
to  rest  his  soul  on  her  dazzling  breast,  to  place  his  arm 


204    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

about  her  waist,  and  feel  her  warm  breath  spread  a  rapture 
in  his  hair.  In  a  posthumously  published  sonnet  he 
pleads,  "I  cry  to  you  for  mercy";  he  wants  her  entirely, 
including  "that  warm,  white,  lucent,  million-pleasured 
breast."  In  the  sonnet  he  wrote  (not  before  his  death,  as 
usually  thought  but  as  Colvin  says,  in  February,  1819), 
in  a  blank  page  in  a  volume  of  Shakespeare  facing  "A 
Lover's  Complaint,"  "Bright  star,  would  I  were  stead- 
fast as  thou  art,"  he  concludes  most  sensuously.  He 
longs  to  be: 

"Pillowed  upon  my  fair  love's  ripening  breast, 
To  feel  forever  its  soft  fall  and  swell, 
Still,  still  to  hear  her  tender-taken  breath. 
And  so  live  forever — or  else  swoon  to  death." 

All  this  shows  that  Keats's  love  was  not  one  where 
the  reason  or  moral  sense  played  a  great  part;  it  was  not 
tender  or  kindly,  but  a  madness,  and  more  than  usually 
physical.  There  can  be  no  doubt,  from  the  evidence  given 
by  Keats,  that  he  indulged  in  reveries  of  physical  satis- 
faction with  Fanny  in  day  dreams. 

Keats  has  himself  written  that  he  had  sensuous  night 
dreams.  He  wrote  in  April,  1819,  apropos  the  sonnet, 
A  Dream,  after  reading  Dante's  Episode  of  Paolo  and 
Francesca:  "The  dream  was  one  of  the  most  delightful 
enjoyments  I  had  in  my  life.  I  floated  about  the  wheel- 
ing atmosphere,  as  it  is  described,  with  a  beautiful  figure, 
to  whose  lips  mine  were  joined,  it  seemed  for  an  age; 
and  in  the  midst  of  all  this  cold  and  darkness  I  was 
warm."  A  flying  dream  always  has  a  sexual  significance, 
even  without  any  female  figure  to  accompany  the 
dreamer.  Of  course  this  figure  was  Fanny  Brawne  to 
whom  he  had  just  been  or  was  about  to  be  betrothed. 


KEATS'S  PERSONAL  LOVE  POEMS        205 


n 

We  now  come  to  his  two  greatest  odes,  the  one  to  the 
Grecian  Urn  and  the  other  to  the  Nightingale.  Both 
were  written  in  the  spring  of  18 19.  In  both  Fanny 
Brawne  is  with  the  poet  though  there  is  no  direct  mention 
of  his  love  for  her  or  his  troubles  with  her.  The  lines 
in  the  Ode  to  a  Grecian  Urn  that  particularly  were  writ- 
ten with  Fanny  in  mind  are  those  addressed  to  the  lover 
of  the  Grecian  Urn. 

"Bold  Lover,  never,  never,  canst  thou  kiss, 
Though  winning  near  the  goal — yet  do  not  grieve; 
She  cannot  fade,  though  thou  hast  not  thy  bliss. 
For  ever  wilt  thou  love  and  she  be  fair." 

Keats  saw  a  resemblance  between  himself  and  that 
youth.  He,  too,  was  winning  and  near  the  goal,  and  he 
no  more  had  her  love  than  did  the  youth  on  the  urn. 
He  himself  knew  the  passion 

"That  leaves  a  heart  high-sorrowful  and  cloy'd, 
A  burning  forehead  and  a  parching  tongue." 

He  had  to  accept  his  lot  and  pretend  to  see  some  ad- 
vantage in  it  as  he  did  in  that  of  the  youth  on  the  urn: 

"More  happy  love !  more  happy,  happy  love ! 
For  ever  warm   and   still   to  be  enjoyed, 
For  ever  panting,  and  for  ever  young." 

The  poem  is  the  song  of  unsatisfied  desires.  Keats, 
frustrated  in  his  love,  had  one  resource,  to  make  poetry 
and  create  beauty  out  of  his  sorrow.  To  the  future  he 
too  would  be  like  that  lover  created  by  an  ancient  artist, 
panting  for  love  ever  young.  The  poem  has  such  great 
appeal  because  it  strikes  a  note  in  us  all. 


2o6    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

In  the  Ode  to  the  Nightingale  we  also  see  evidence 
of  his  love  sadness  because  of  Fanny.  He  expresses  a 
wish  to  go  away  with  the  bird  from  scenes 

"Where  youth  grows  pale,  and  spectre  thin,  and  dies; 
Where  beauty  cannot  keep  her  lustrous  eyes, 
Or  new  love  pine  at  them  beyond  to-morrow." 

The  nightingale  has  not  known  Hke  him 

"The  weariness,  the  fever  and  the  fret 
Here  where  men  sit  and  hear  each  other  groan." 

Miss  Brawne  had  embittered  his  life  and  hence  he  must 
fly  at  least  in  fancy  through  poetry  with  the  bird.  Again 
he  finds  consolation  for  his  unhappy  love  in  poetry. 

He  has  been  half  in  love  with  death,  he  has  thought  of 
taking  to  drink ;  he  expressed  both  these  ideas  in  previous 
poems.  He  is  reminded  that  the  nightingale's  song  was 
heard  by  Ruth,  because  love  is  uppermost  in  his  mind. 
But  he  knows  his  fancied  flight  with  the  bird  must  end 
shortly.  He  will  soon  come  back  to  his  real  self  with 
the  vexing  thoughts  of  Fanny. 

"Adieu  the  fancy  cannot  cheat  so  well 
As  she  is   famed  to   do,   deceivmg  elf." 

Then  the  music  ceased,  and  he  is  back  on  earth  again. 

The  unconscious  sex  symbolism  in  the  wish  to  fly  with 
the  nightingale  is  a  further  proof  of  his  unsatisfied  love. 

The  motive  of  both  these  great  poems  was  then  sup- 
plied by  his  unsatisfactory  love  affair,  but  critics  have 
not  openly  asserted  the  fact.  It  wasn't  a  mere  walk  in 
the  British  Museum  or  in  Brown's  garden  that  gave  birth 
to  the  poems.  These  events  merely  incited  him  to  put 
on  paper  the  poems  which  had  already  for  some  time 
past  fermented  in  his  unconscious  and  were  really  pro- 
duced by  his  repressed  love  for  Fanny.     Had  he  been 


KEATS 'S  PERSONAL  LOVE  POEMS        207 

happy  in  love,  it  is  very  likely  we  would  never  have  had 
these  poems.  They  are  as  personal  as  the  poems  previ- 
ously mentioned  addressed  directly  to  Fanny,  as  La 
Belle  Dame,  and  the  sonnet  written  in  the  fly  leaf  of 
Shakespeare.  The  same  unhappy  longings  gave  rise  to 
them  all,  and  they  were  all  written  within  a  few  months 
of  each  other,  though  I  have  no  evidence  as  to  the  date  of 
the  sonnet  and  the  lines  to  Fanny. 

But  it  is  in  a  long  poem  where  Fanny  is  chiefly  pres- 
ent unconsciously,  in  Lamia.  We  have  here  the  tale  of 
Lamia,  a  beautiful  woman,  who  is  a  metamorphosed 
serpent  ensnaring  Lycius  of  Corinth  by  her  beauty. 
Fanny  is  Lamia  the  serpent  woman,  Lycius  of  Corinth  is 
Keats  himself.  Lycius  is  about  to  marry  Lamia,  as 
Keats  was  also  thinking  of  marrying  Fanny.  It  should, 
by  the  way,  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  period  of  the 
writing  of  Lamia  corresponds  with  the  date  of  the  first 
published  despairing  letters  of  Keats  to  Fanny,  the 
summer  and  fall  of  1819.  It  would  be  a  rare  miracle  if 
during  this  time  he  could  have  kept  thoughts  of  his 
sweetheart  out  of  his  work.  Unconsciously  he  felt  she 
acted  like  a  serpent,  and  hence  he  drew  her  as  such. 

Lycius  did  not  want  his  teacher  Apollonius,  the  philos- 
opher, at  the  feast.  But  the  preceptor  did  come,  an  un- 
bidden guest,  and  told  Lycius  who  this  beautiful  woman 
really  was.  Lycius  died  of  disappointment.  Keats  did 
not  wish  to  be  told  the  truth  about  Fanny's  lack  of  char- 
acter, and  thus  be  disillusioned.  He  felt  that  he  too 
would  die,  hence  he  fears  facts  and  asks:  "Do  not 
all  charms  fly  at  the  touch  of  cold  philosophy?"  In 
this  question  we  see  already  he  suspects  the  nature  of 
Fanny.  But  he  will  not  believe  his  uncertain  suspicions 
nor  investigate  them.  It  is  the  voice  of  his  own  uncon- 
scious that  he  hears  in  these  words  of  his  preceptor: 


208    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

"  'Fool !     Fool !'  repeated  he,  while  his  eyes  still 
Relented  not,  nor  moved;  'from  every  ill 
In  life  have  I  preserved  thee  to  this  day. 
And  shall  I  see  thee  made  a  serpent's  prey?'" 

He  attacks  Fanny  in  his  description  of  Lamia's  plead- 
ing, whose  beauty  smote  while  it  guaranteed  to  save. 
He  tells  of  the  meshes  in  which  he  struggled.  That  he 
published  the  poem  in  his  lifetime  is  evidence  that  he 
himself  was  not  altogether  aware  he  was  analysing  his 
own  love  affair  and  was  abusing  his  fiancee.  When  he 
resolved  to  make  a  poem  of  the  little  tale  he  read  in 
Burton's  Anatomy  of  Melancholy  it  was  his  unconscious 
that  chose  the  theme  for  him,  recognising  that  he  had 
many  affinities  in  his  life  with  that  of  the  unfortunate 
Corinthian  youth.  The  poem  contains  more  of  himself 
than  any  of  his  long  poems. 

There  are  many  other  poems  of  Keats  where  the  per- 
sonal element  enters  and  where  he  tells  us  of  his  un- 
conscious. The  affair  with  Fanny  coloured  his  entire 
work  after  he  met  her.  He  also  knew  and  admired  an- 
other girl  about  the  time  he  met  Fanny,  whom  he  calls 
a  Charmian ;  she  was  a  Miss  Cox,  but  she  did  not  greatly 
influence  him.  It  is  to  the  intense  affection  Keats  had 
for  his  mother,  of  whom  he  was  deprived  in  boyhood,  and 
the  unfortunate  affair  with  Fanny,  that  we  owe  some  of 
his  best  literary  work. 


CHAPTER  XV 

Shelley's  personal  love  poems 


Shelley's  great  love  poems  were  inspired  by  love  re- 
pressions, and  it  will  be  my  province  to  try  to  trace  some 
of  the  finest  poems  in  the  English  language  to  their 
sources. 

His  relations  with  women  have  been  much  criticised 
and  also  much  misunderstood.  The  first  thing  unusual 
about  his  life  is  the  slight  influence  his  mother  exerted 
upon  him.  Shelley,  no  doubt,  loved  his  mother,  but  he  re- 
ceived very  little  sympathy  from  her.  As  a  result  he  be- 
came strongly  attached  to  his  sisters;  in  them  he  sought 
unconsciously  for  the  mother  he  had  all  but  lost.  He  was 
alienated  from  his  father  in  boyhood,  and  there  were  def- 
inite clashes  later.  The  poet  was  the  oldest  of  six 
children. 

He  loved  his  cousin,  Harriet  Grove,  and  was  engaged 
to  her.  She  broke  the  engagement  on  account  of  the 
views  he  entertained.  Her  parents  influenced  her  in  this 
action.  It  was  Shelley's  first  love  affair.  The  poet  was 
in  his  nineteenth  year  when  he  was  jilted;  he  slept 
with  a  loaded  pistol  and  poison  near  him  for  some  time 
after  this.  In  January,  1811,  in  a  letter  to  his  friend, 
Hogg,  he  writes  he  would  have  followed  Harriet  to  the 
end  of  the  earth.  He  asks  his  friend  never  to  mention 
her.     He   tells   of   a   personal   interview   with   Harriet 

209 


210    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

and  laments  that  she  is  gone  and  that  he  still 
breathes  and  lives.  On  January  ii  he  wrote:  "She 
is  gone!  She  is  lost  to  me  forever!  She  married!  Mar- 
ried to  a  clod  of  earth;  she  will  become  as  insensible  her- 
self; all  those  fine  capabilities  will  moulder."  She  had, 
however,  not  yet  married.  It  was  the  recollections  of 
these  acute  sufferings  that  he  later  put  into  the  mouth 
of  the  maniac  in  Julian  and  Maddalo;  thob>j  poignant 
ravings  were  for  a  half  century  regarded  as  impersonal, 
and  were  never  thought  to  be  directed  against  a  real 
woman  whom  he  loved. 

In  the  latter  part  of  March,  1811,  the  poet  was  ex- 
pelled from  Oxford  for  his  pamphlet  on  atheism.  In  the 
meantime  he  had  met  Harriet  Westbrook  and  married 
her,  in  a  spirit  of  gallantry,  in  the  latter  part  of  August, 
181 1 ;  he  sympathised  with  her  because  of  her  sufferings 
at  home.  He  also  liked  Elizabeth  Hitchener  at  the  time, 
and  later  asked  her  to  come  and  live  with  his  wife  and 
himself.  She  did  so  about  July,  181 2.  Shelley's  wife  had 
no  liking  for  her,  so  Miss  Hitchener  was  practically 
bribed  by  the  poet  to  leave.  This  she  did  in  November. 
Shelley  was  disillusioned  in  her,  and  he  really  had  very 
little  in  common  with  her,  though  she  was  intellectually 
superior  to  Harriet,  Shelley's  wife. 

In  July,  1 8 14,  Shelley  deserted  his  wife.  A  few  weeks 
later  he  left  with  Mary  Godwin,  with  whom  he  had  been 
friendly  since  the  spring  of  the  year.  On  December, 
1 81 6,  Harriet  committed  suicide  by  drowning,  while  preg- 
nant. 

Shelley  married  his  second  wife  legally  December  30, 
1 81 6.  He  probably  was  not  madly  in  love  with  her. 
Mention  should  be  made  of  two  cases  of  unreciprocated 
affection  for  him  on  the  part  of  the  poet's  two  sisters-in- 
law,  Fanny  Godwin,  who  committed  suicide,  and  Jane 


SHELLEY'S  PERSONAL  LOVE  POEMS   211 

Clairmont,  the  daughter  of  Mrs.  Godwin  by  a  previous 
marriage,  and  also  known  as  the  mistress  of  Byron. 

The  two  women  whom  Shelley  loved  after  his  marriage 
and  who  inspired  some  of  his  best  poetry  were  Emilia 
Viviani  and  Mrs.  James  Williams.  Shelley  met  Miss 
Viviani  about  December,  1820.  That  winter  he  wrote 
the  Epipsychidion,  v,'hich  was  a  love  poem  to  her;  here 
he  also  told  us  the  history  of  his  love  affairs.  In  June, 
1822,  he  refers  to  his  disillusionment  with  her.  About 
this  time  his  feeling  for  his  friend's  wife,  Mrs.  Williams, 
overpowered  him,  and  he  wrote  a  number  of  lyrics  to  her. 
He  was  drowned  July  8,  1822,  with  Mr.  Williams. 

Shelley  never  had  a  satisfactory  love  affair  in  his  life. 
He  was  discarded  by  his  first  love,  for  whom  his  affec- 
tion was  strong.  He  did  not  love  his  first  wife  at  all, 
and  his  second  wife  did  not  give  him  that  satisfaction  in 
love  for  which  he  craved.  Hence  he  yearned  after 
others.  His  new  affairs  brought  him  no  happiness,  as  he 
was  disillusioned  in  his  Emilia,  while  Mrs.  Williams  was 
married  to  his  friend;  social  intercourse  was  for  a  while 
stopped  between  Shelley  and  the  Williamses  on  account 
of  Shelley's  love.  Two  other  women  who  cared  for  him 
did  not  attract  him.  This  whole  state  of  affairs  led  to 
some  of  his  best  poems,  brought  out  some  of  his  views 
on  free  love,  and  influenced  his  lyrics.  We  will  exam- 
ine how  his  poetry  arose  from  the  depths  of  his  uncon- 
scious. 

Julian  and  Maddalo  was  first  sketched  in  18 14.  The 
maniac's  soliloquy,  which  is  one  of  the  most  forceful  out- 
cries of  love  disappointment  in  poetry,  inspired  by  per- 
sonal experience,  and  is,  with  Swinburne's  The  Triumph 
of  Time,  among  the  greatest  of  all  such  products  in  lit- 
erature, is  Shelley's  own  outburst.  It  is  his  full  fury  cast 
at  Harriet  Grove,  and  was  not,  as  surmised  by  Arabella 


212    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

Shore  (Gentleman's  Magazine  [1887],  v.  263,  p.  329). 
and  H.  S.  Salt  (Shelley  Society  Papers  [1888],  p.  325), 
directed  against  his  first  wife.  He  never  loved  her  as 
that  maniac  loved;  besides,  it  was  not  true  of  Harriet 
Westbrook  that  she  ceased  to  love  Shelley.  It  is  said 
that  the  poet  believed  her  guilty  of  adultery  while  living 
with  him,  but  even  if  this  were  so  (and  we  have  no  evi- 
dence to  warrant  such  a  belief),  the  poet  had  been  cast- 
ing longing  eyes  at  Mary  Godwin,  his  future  second  wife, 
for  some  time  before  he  left  his  first  wife;  we  have  no 
proof  that  the  poet  was  heartbroken  after  he  left  Harriet 
Westbrook,  though  he  sympathised  with  her. 

His  affair  with  Harriet  Grove  was  not  the  ephemeral 
thing  that  William  Sharp  deems  it,  in  his  biography  of  the 
poet.  For  even  when  married  to  Harriet  Westbrook,  he 
was  still  chagrined  about  the  first  Harriet.  When  Miss 
Grove  married  a  cousin  in  the  fall  of  181 1,  a  few  months 
after  his  own  marriage,  the  poet  wrote  to  her  brother, 
asking  how  he  liked  his  brother-in-law,  and  added  sar- 
castically and  bitterly,  "A  new  brother  as  well  as  a  new 
cousin  must  be  an  invaluable  acquisition."  This  was  in 
October  28,  181 1.  Harriet  Grove's  conduct  had  caused 
him  to  spend  many  sleepless  nights,  and  only  a  few 
months  before  his  marriage  to  Miss  Westbrook  he  had 
suicidal  thoughts.  He  wrote  sad  love  verses  and  a  com- 
plaint against  love's  perfidy.  Captain  Kennedy  describes 
Shelley,  in  June,  18 13,  as  playing  on  the  piano  a  favourite 
tune  which  Harriet  Grove  used  to  play  for  him.  (Dow- 
den's  Lije  of  Shelley,  p.  390.)  It  was  in  the  next  year 
that  he  sketched  the  poem,  Julian  and  Maddalo,  and 
while  it  is  likely  that  in  the  final  version,  which  was 
written  four  years  later  though  published  after  his 
death,  unconscious  emotions  regarding  Harriet  West- 
brook were  fused  into  the  poem  along  with  the  indig- 


SHELLEY'S  PERSONAL  LOVE  POEMS      213 

nation  at  Harriet  Grove.  The  reference  to  the  tomb 
for  which  the  lady  addressed  in  the  poem  deserted 
the  poet,  may  have  been  suggested  by  the  dead  Harriet 
Westbrook;  but  this  fact  is  not  sufficient  reason  for  re- 
garding her  the  subject  of  the  poem,  as  Miss  Shore  and 
Mr.  Salt  do.  We  should  look  for  truth  beyond  such  in- 
cidental references.  The  pain  in  this  poem  is  the  memory 
of  a  far  greater  and  earlier  agony  than  that  Shelley  ex- 
perienced by  Harriet  Westbrook's  infidelity;  rather  of 
the  grief  that  Harriet  Grove  caused  him.  The  passages 
in  the  letters  to  Hogg  prove  that  the  poet's  sorrow  was 
too  keen  for  him  to  forget;  he  could  not  help  but  put 
them  unconsciously  in  this  poem. 

There  are  references  to  Harriet  Grove  in  Epipsychidion 
written  in  the  early  winter  of  182 1.  Mr.  Flea,  in  an 
article  on  The  Story  of  Shelley's  Life  in  Epipsychidion, 
contends  correctly  that  Harriet  Grove  is  the  "one  with 
the  voice  which  was  envenomed  melody,"  from  whose 
cheeks  flew  a  killing  air  which  lay  upon  the  leaves  of  the 
poet's  heart  and  made  him  feel  the  ruins  of  age.  The 
bitterness  of  this  passage  is  equal  to  that  in  Julian  and 
Maddalo,  and  hence  the  lines  do  not  refer  to  some  vulgar 
affair  as  some  critics  think. 

Shelley  had  written  some  of  his  earliest  sad  and  lugu- 
brious love  poems  to  Harriet  Grove,  and  they  appeared  in 
1 8 10,  in  the  volume  Victor  and  Cazir,  a  copy  of  which 
book  the  poet  presented  to  Harriet  Grove.  In  the  No- 
vember of  the  same  year,  when  he  was  losing  her, 
he  published  Posthumous  fragments  of  Margaret  Nichol- 
son, and  the  concluding  poem,  "Melody  to  a  Scene  of 
Former  Times,"  has  all  the  pain  of  the  Maniac's  solilo- 
quy in  Julian  and  Maddalo,  and  was,  no  doubt,  written 
to  Harriet  Grove.  It  has  passages  of  reproach  like  those 
in  that  poem. 


214    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

The  best-known  lines  in  the  latter  poem  are: 

"Most  wretched  men 
Are  cradled  into  poetry  by  wrong; 
They  learn  in  suffering  what  they  teach  in  song." 

The  reader  may  think  that  it  is  utterly  insignificant 
whether  the  Julian  poem  was  written  about  the  first  Har- 
riet instead  of  the  second,  but  this  is  just  as  important 
as  to  know  that,  let  us  say,  Arthur  Hallam,  and  not  some 
one  else,  is  the  person  mourned  by  Tennyson  in  In 
Memoriam.  And  we  are  enabled  to  learn  the  influence 
upon  his  work  and  ideas  when  we  understand  the  nature 
of  the  earliest  sex  repression  in  the  poet's  life.  This  af- 
fair in  Shelley's  nineteenth  year  was  of  vast  import;  it 
made  the  Shelley  we  know,  the  enemy  of  society  and  the 
reformer. 

He  hated  intolerance,  religion  and  monarchy  because 
by  his  heterodoxy  and  the  offence  it  gave  to  Harriet 
Grove's  parents,  he  lost  her;  not  to  mention  that  he  also 
lost  his  mother's  love  for  his  radical  views.  He  saw  the 
world  steeped  in  error,  and  he  believed  this  condition 
made  him  lose  the  love  of  his  betrothed  and  of  his 
mother.  He  wrote  to  Hogg  that  he  would  never  forgive 
intolerance.  "It  is  the  only  point  on  which  I  allow  my- 
self to  encourage  revenge;  every  moment  shall  be  devoted 
to  my  object  which  I  am  able  to  spare."  Here  in  the 
words  of  this  youth  we  see  the  main  factor  which  led  to 
writing  Prometheus  Unbound  and  The  Revolt  of  Islam. 
His  plans  shaped  themselves  at  the  time  of  the  jilting, 
and  he  never  swerved  from  them.  And  in  the  opening 
stanzas  of  the  eleventh  canto  of  the  Islam  poem  he  again 
describes  the  agonies  of  his  lost  love,  with  Harriet  Grove 
in  mind,  no  doubt.  This  poem  was  written  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1817.     Shelley  then  became  an  uncompromising 


SHELLEY'S  PERSONAL  LOVE  POEMS   215 

reformer  because  he  had  suffered  in  love  for  his  radical 
ideas;  hence  he  would  make  it  his  aim  to  spread  the 
views  which  he  held  so  that  in  the  future  other  lovers 
should  not  lose  their  sweethearts  because  of  liberal  no- 
tions. And  in  the  Ode  to  the  West  Wind  Shelley's 
prayer  is  to  spread  his  ideas  over  the  universe. 

Though  the  poet  wrote  a  few  good  poems  to  Harriet 
Westbrook  and  dedicated  Queen  Mab  to  her,  she  had 
little  or  no  influence  on  his  life  except  to  bring  him  sor- 
row because  of  her  suicide.  One  of  the  few  references 
to  her  in  his  later  work  is  in  the  Epipsychidion,  "And 
one  was  true — oh!  why  not  true  to  me?"  Stopford 
Brooke  thinks  this  refers  to  Harriet  Grove,  but  this  is  not 
likely,  as  Shelley  continues,  "there  shone  again  deliver- 
ance," and  he  speaks  of  one  who  was  to  him  like  the 
Moon.  The  Moon  was,  of  course,  his  second  wife,  Mary 
Godwin,  who  immediately  succeeded  Harriet  Westbrook. 

n 

The  Epipsychidion  tells  us  of  the  poet's  love  adven- 
tures and  gives  us  his  beautiful  dream  of  love.  In  Alastor 
he  had  depicted  his  longing  for  love ;  the  poem  was  writ- 
ten in  1815  at  the  time  he  was  living  with  Harriet  West- 
brook ;  it  shows  how  lonely  he  felt  and  how  he  longed  for 
love.  In  Epipsychidion,  where  he  speaks  of  his  lying 
"within  a  chaste,  cold  bed,"  he  says  that  he  had  not  the 
full  measure  of  love  from  his  second  wife.  Hence  he  took 
refuge  in  building  a  fanciful  isle  where  he  satisfies  his 
love  with  Emilia  Viviani.  In  this  great  poem  Shelley 
gives  us  a  glimpse  into  his  polygamously  inclined  uncon- 
scious. He  states  his  philosophy  of  free  love  in  the 
poem.  As  physical  desire  was  a  strong  factor  in  Keats's 
one  solitary  love,  the  trait  most  characteristic  of  Shelley 


2i6    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

was  his  polygamous  instinct.  This  is  present  in  the  un- 
conscious of  the  male,  and  society  has  tried  to  eradicate 
it  by  marriage.  We  all  know  that  there  has  never  been 
complete  success  in  this  direction.  The  instinct  which  is 
repressed  bursts  forth  especially  when  the  marriage  has 
not  been  successful,  or  when  the  man  does  not  love  his 
wife  in  full  measure,  though  as  the  world  is  aware  it 
breaks  out  even  in  cases  where  he  does  love.  Neither 
of  Shelley's  two  marriages  gave  him  the  real  love  he 
sought.  He  wanted  other  women  to  live  in  his  house- 
hold. He  invited  Miss  Titchener  to  live  with  him 
and  Harriet  Westbrook,  and  he  had  Jane  Clairmont,  his 
wife's  half  sister,  who  fell  in  love  with  him,  live  with 
them.  He  thought  he  would  be  happy  with  Miss  Viviani, 
but  was  disillusioned  with  her  soon,  and  then  his  polyga- 
mous instinct  made  Mrs.  Jane  Williams  the  object  of  his 
affections.  Yet  Shelley  led  a  chaste,  upright  life  and  did 
not  satisfy  his  instincts  for  polygamy;  instead,  he  wrote 
poetry.  He  created  fantasies  because  of  his  repressions, 
and  gave  us  the  beautiful  day  dream  closing  the  Epi- 
psychidion. 

Mrs.  Williams  inspired  some  of  the  greatest  lyrics  in 
the  language.  The  painful  poem  to  her  husband  begin- 
ning with  the  words,  "The  serpent  is  shut  out  from  para- 
dise," tells  how  he  flies  because  Mrs.  Williams's  looks 
stir  griefs  that  should  sleep  and  hopes  that  cannot  die. 
The  world  owes  to  Shelley's  attachment  for  Mrs.  Wil- 
liams such  poems  as,  Rarely,  Rarely,  Contest  Thou, 
Spirit  of  Delight,  One  Word  Is  too  Often  Profaned,  When 
the  Lamp  is  Shattered,  Oh,  World!  Oh,  Hope!  Oh,  Time! 
Rough  Wind,  That  Moanest  Loud,  With  a  Guitar,  To 
Jane,  To  Jane — the  Invitation,  To  Jane — the  Recollec- 
tion, Remembrance,  Lines  Written  in  the  Bay  of  Lerici, 
and  The  Magnetic  Lady  to  Her  Patient.     Here  are  a 


SHELLEY'S  PERSONAL  LOVE  POEMS   217 

dozen  poems  tiiat  every  lover  of  Shelley  knows,  yet  they 
are  the  outpourings  of  the  poet's  love  for  another  man's 
wife,  written  because  he  could  not  attain  that  love  and 
satisfy  his  polygamous  instincts.  Had  these  instincts 
been  satisfied,  these  beautiful  poems  would  have  been 
lost  to  the  world. 

We  now  come  to  two  of  his  greatest  odes.  To  the 
Wild  West  Wind  and  To  the  Skylark.  Here,  as  in 
the  case  of  Keats's  two  great  odes,  the  critics  have  feared 
to  trace  the  poems  to  a  love  repression  on  the  part  of  the 
poet.  In  fact,  most  criticisms  of  the  poems  treat  them 
as  alien  to  the  subject  of  love.  And  yet  unconsciously 
Shelley  is  here  voicing  his  longing  for  love  and  giving 
vent  to  his  unconscious  polygamous  instinct.  Mr.  Crib- 
ble, in  his  Romantic  Life  of  Shelley,  surmises  that  the 
poet  is  really  unconsciously  expressing  dissatisfaction 
with  his  married  life.  When  Shelley  wrote  these  poems 
he  was  still  groping  for  love;  he  lived  with  his  sec- 
ond wife,  and  as  far  as  we  know  had  no  love  affair.  He 
had  not  yet  fallen  in  love  with  either  Miss  Viviani  or 
Mrs.  Williams. 

The  Ode  to  the  West  Wind  was  written  in  the  fall  of 
1 819.  The  poet  at  the  time  was  unhappy;  a  child  of  his 
had  died,  and  his  wife  was  suffering  great  depression. 
When  the  poet  was  complaining  that  he  was  falling  on 
the  thorns  of  life  and  bleeding,  and  speaking  of  the  "au- 
tumnal tone"  in  his  life,  he  was  referring  to  the 
repression  of  his  love  life.  He  lived  with  Mary 
whom  he  did  not  love  passionately.  If  he  concludes 
his  poem  with  the  prayer  that  the  wind  drive  his 
dead  thoughts  over  the  universe  to  quicken  a  new 
birth,  he  wants  to  profit  by  this  in  love.  He  unconsci- 
ously meant  that  if  his  ideas  on  free  love  should  prevail, 
he  would  be  able  to  take  a  new  love  without  reproach 


2i8    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

and  without  suffering  such  misfortunes  as  he  did  when 
he  deserted  his  first  wife.  He  had  been  deprived  of  his 
children  and  was  driven  to  exile  from  his  native  land  a 
year  and  a  half  previously,  March,  1818.  It  has  been  one 
of  the  ironies  of  Shelley's  fate  that  the  world  has  admired 
this  West  Wind  ode  greatly,  and  tabooed  the  most  im- 
portant idea  Shelley  wanted  spread,  that  of  free  love.  So 
if  we  read  between  the  lines  in  this  great  ode  pleading 
for  the  dissemination  of  his  idea,  we  find  the  poet's  un- 
conscious stating  he  is  unhappy  and  is  longing  for  an- 
other love  than  that  of  his  wife.  He  pleads  for  a  satis- 
faction of  his  polygamous  instincts.  Should  the  reader 
think  this  conclusion  untenable,  I  can  reply  that  the 
facts  we  have  of  the  poet's  life  give  it  unqualified  sup- 
port. Let  us  also  remember  that  the  fructifying  wind  was 
always  a  sex  symbol. 

It  is  the  same  with  The  Ode  to  the  Skylark,  written 
nearly  a  year  later.  He  envies  the  bird  its  happiness. 
"Shadow  of  annoyance  never  came  near  thee,"  he  says  to 
it.  "Thou  lovest — but  ne'er  knew  love's  sad  satiety." 
Here  he  betrays  himself  by  a  few  words.  He  has  had  his 
satiety  of  love,  and  sad  it  was,  without  satisfying  him. 
He  doesn't  love  his  present  wife;  he  never  cared  deeply 
for  his  first  wife;  his  first  sweetheart  rejected  him;  and 
he  had  been  loved  by  girls  he  did  not  love.  All  these 
facts  justify  us  in  selecting  the  words,  "love's  sad  satiety" 
and  assigning  them  a  definite  meaning.  Had  we  known 
nothing  of  the  poet's  biography  we  could  not  have 
spoken  with  such  conviction.  He  sings  "our  sweetest 
songs  are  those  that  tell  of  saddest  thought."  His  sad- 
dest thoughts  have  been  those  about  the  difficulties  of 
finding  love's  ideal,  and  of  loving  another  when  pledged 
to  some  one  else.     Then  we  have  the  unconscious  sex 


SHELLEY'S  PERSONAL  LOVE  POEMS      219 

symbolism  in  the  wish  to  be  happy  like  the  flying  sing- 
ing bird. 

Psychoanalytic  methods  applied  to  Shelley  reveal  him 
then,  in  his  love  poems  and  in  lyrics  which  were  not  sup- 
posed to  deal  with  love,  as  a  chaste  man  with  polygamous 
inclinations  and  married  to  a  woman  he  did  not  love 
passionately.  There  is  a  connection  between  this  state 
of  affairs  and  his  interest  in  scattering  liberal  ideas.  That 
he  also  mistook  real  love  for  platonic  love  may  be  seen 
by  Epipsychidion  and  the  poems  to  Mrs.  Williams.  Un- 
conscious love  elements  were  at  the  basis  of  other  poems 
of  his,  like  the  Ode  to  Dejection. 

Alastor,  Julian  and  Maddalo  and  Epipsychidion  of  the 
longer  poems,  his  dozen  lyrics  inspired  by  love  for  Mrs. 
Williams,  and  his  two  famous  odes  represent  the  personal 
Shelley  from  the  love  side,  and  are  among  the  greatest 
poems  in  any  language. 

A  few  words  should  be  said  about  Adonais,  his  great 
elegy  on  Keats.  It  is  one  of  his  personal  poems,  and 
among  the  best  known  lines  are  those  describing  himself, 
"who  in  another's  fate  wept  his  own."  The  critics  who 
attacked  the  work  of  Keats,  though  they  did  not,  as 
Shelley  erroneously  thought,  drive  Keats  to  death,  were 
the  very  reviewers  who  attacked  Shelley  and  his  ideas. 
Even  in  this  grand  elegy  Shelley  was  also  bemoaning  un- 
consciously his  failure,  and  complaining  that  his  ideas  on 
free  love,  liberal  religion  and  republicanism  were  attacked. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 


Edgar  Allan  Poe  proves  an  interesting  study  from 
the  point  of  view  of  psychoanalysis.  He  has  been 
analysed  by  pathologists  and  psychologists,  but  there 
remains  much  to  be  said  about  the  work  of  this  baffling 
genius.  I  can  take  up  only  a  few  phases  of  the  pathetic 
life  and  great  work  of  Poe. 

One  question  that  has  interested  critics  is,  what  was  the 
source  of  those  mysterious  ladies  in  his  stories,  the  Ligeias, 
the  Morellas,  the  Eleonoras?  What  made  him  so  pre- 
occupied with  the  subject  of  the  death  of  beautiful  women 
long  before  his  own  wife  died?  All  this  brings  us  to  a 
little  emphasised  chapter  in  Poe's  life,  the  history  of  one 
of  his  love  affairs  before  he  married  Virginia  Clemm.  Its 
influence  on  his  work  has  hardly  ever  been  noted  by 
critics,  and  yet  the  effect  was  of  great  importance. 

Poe  lost  his  parents  when  he  was  an  infant,  and  he 
was  adopted  by  Mr.  Allan.  He  loved  the  mother  of  a 
friend  of  his,  Mrs.  Stannard,  and  when  she  died  (he  was 
1 5  at  the  time) ,  he  was  inconsolable.  But  the  history  of 
this  boyish  love  is  not  fully  known  to  us.  As  a  boy  of 
sixteen  he  loved  Sarah  Elmira  Royster,  whom  he  again 
met  later  in  life  and  to  whom  he  became  engaged  shortly 
before  his  death.    At  about  the  age  of  twenty  or  there- 

220 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE  221 

after  he  loved  his  cousin,  Miss  Elizabeth  Herring,  and 
wrote  several  poems  to  her. 

The  real  clue  to  Poe's  life  and  work  is  furnished  in  an 
article,  "Poe's  Mary,"  that  appeared  in  Harper's  Maga- 
zine for  March,  1889,  by  Agustus  Van  Cleef.  It  reports 
a  conversation  with  a  woman  who  was  Poe's  sweetheart 
and  who  rejected  him.  Her  name  is  now  known  to  us  as 
Mary  Devereaux.  The  main  facts  of  the  article  have 
not  been  questioned  by  his  biographers.  The  substance 
of  the  interview  is  this:  Mary  Devereaux  met  Poe 
through  a  flirtation.  Her  memory  did  not  serve  her  as 
to  the  date,  which  she  put  in  1835.  But  since  Poe  was 
betrothed  to  Virginia  that  year,  and  had  been  betrothed 
to  her  for  some  time,  the  date  was  probably  1832,  as  the 
author  of  the  article  surmises,  though  Killis  Campbell 
believes  the  year  was  1831.  Mary  returned  the  poet's 
love,  and  he  called  on  her  almost  every  evening  for  a 
year.  She  jilted  him,  and  Poe  horsewhipped  a  relation 
of  hers  as  being  responsible  for  his  loss.  He  wrote  for 
a  Baltimore  paper  a  poem  of  six  or  eight  verses  express- 
ing his  indignant  sentiments.  This  passion  continued 
with  Poe,  buried  in  his  unconscious,  even  after  he  married 
Virginia  Clemm.  The  day  before  Virginia  died,  in  1847, 
Mary  was  at  the  Poe  household,  and  Virginia  said  to  her: 
"Be  a  friend  to  Eddie,  and  don't  forsake  him;  he  always 
loved  you — didn't  you,  Eddie?" 

There  is  an  account  in  the  article  of  a  scene  that  oc- 
curred in  the  spring  of  1842.  Poe  tried  at  the  time  to  see 
Mary,  who  was  then  a  married  woman,  at  her  home  in 
Jersey  City.  He  reproached  her  and  shouted  that  she  did 
not  love  her  husband,  and  he  tried  to  force  her  to  corrobo- 
rate his  words.  He  had  been  inquiring  for  her,  and  made 
up  his  mind  he  would  see  her  even  "if  he  had  to  go  to 
hell"  to  do  it.     When  he  saw  her,  he  was  somewhat 


22  2    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

soothed,  and  she  sang  to  him  his  favourite  song,  ''Come 
Rest  in  This  Bosom."  She  had  sung  this  for  him  in  the 
early  days,  and  also  at  a  visit  she  paid  him  in  Philadel- 
phia not  long  before  his  Jersey  City  visit.  After  this  epi- 
sode at  her  home  the  poet  was  found  in  the  woods  wan- 
dering about  like  one  crazy. 

Mary  Devereaux  scoffed  at  the  idea  that  the  poet's 
child  wife  was  the  great  passion  of  his  life.  It  was 
always  known,  in  spite  of  Poe's  tenderness  for  Virginia, 
that  he  never  found  intellectual  companionship  in  her. 
Foe  married  Virginia  in  May,  1836,  when  he  was  27 
and  she  14  years  old.  He  was  living  in  1833  with  the 
Clemms  in  Baltimore,  and  had  taken  out  a  marriage 
license  on  September  22,  1835,  but  Virginia  was  then  too 
young  for  marriage. 

The  relation  of  Mary  to  his  work  will  soon  appear.  I 
wish  to  show  first  that  the  splendid  love  poem.  To  One 
in  Paradise,  appearing  in  the  tale  The  Assignation,  was, 
with  the  story,  inspired  by  Mary.  Visionary,  the  original 
title  of  The  Assignation,  appeared  with  the  poem  in  Jan- 
uary, 1834,  in  Godey's  Lady's  Book,  and  hence  was  writ- 
ten in  1833,  or  before.  It  was  among  the  tales  submitted 
in  the  prize  contest  that  year  in  which  Poe  was  success- 
ful with  one  of  his  stories.  When  Poe  later  obtained  em- 
ployment on  The  Southern  Literary  Messenger,  he  re- 
printed here  some  of  his  tales;  this  tale  was  reprinted  in 
July,  1835.  The  clue  comes  now.  In  the  same  number 
of  the  Messenger  there  is  a  poem  entitled  To  Mary,  by 
Poe,  beginning,  "Mary  amid  the  cares — the  woes,"  which 
in  sentiments  and  ideas  is  but  another  version  of  To  One 
in  Paradise  in  the  Visionary.  This  poem  To  Mary  ap- 
pears in  Poe's  poetical  works  under  the  title  To  F . 

He  reprinted  this  poem,  which  was  originally  written  to 
his  love  Mary,  in  Graham's  Magazine  for  March,  1842, 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE  223 

and  changed  the  first  line  and  called  the  poem  no  longer 
To  Mary,  but  To  One  Departed,  very  suggestive  of 
the  To  One  in  Paradise.  Poe,  who  would  make  a  poem 
written  to  one  lady  serve,  by  a  few  changes  in  its  text, 
for  another  later  woman  friend,  gave  this  poem  its  present 
title.  To  F ,  when  he  reprinted  it  in  the  1845  Broad- 
way Journal  in  honour  of  the  poet  Frances  S.  Osgood, 
whom  he  met  that  year.* 

If  we  compare  To  One  in  Paradise  with  To  F 

there  will  be  no  doubt  that  they  were  inspired  by  the 
same  person  and  written  at  the  same  time,  1833,  when 
the  affair  with  Mary  was  over.  In  both  poems  references 
are  made  to  his  sweetheart  being  an  isle  in  the  sea  and 
covered  with  flowers  over  which  the  sun  smiles.  In  each 
poem  mention  is  made  of  the  desolate  condition  of  the 
poet  who  derives  happiness  from  living  in  dreams  con- 
nected with  her.     To  F is  not  as  perfect  as  the 

other,  but  the  idea  underlying  each  poem  is  the  same. 
The  sonnet  To  Zante  also  has  the  same  imagery,  and 
was  written,  no  doubt,  at  the  same  time  to  Mary. 

To  One  in  Paradise  is  supposed  to  be  written  by  the 
lover  in  the  story  Assignation,  in  which  it  appears.  It 
will  be  recalled  that  the  lover  of  Marchesa  Aphrodite  in 
that  tale  had  written  the  poem  in  a  volume  of  Politian's 
tragedy,  a  page  of  which  was  blotted  with  tears.  Poe  is 
that  lover  and  Marchesa  Aphrodite  is  Mary.     But  we 

*He  honoured  Mrs.  Osgood  in  the  same  way  by  republishing 
another  poem  from  the  Southern  Literary  Messenger  of  Sep- 
tember, 1835,  written  for  some  Eliza  and  opening  "Eliza,  let 
thy  generous  heart."  This  poem  in  the  poetical  works  of  Poe 
bears  the  title,  "Lines  Written  in  an  Album."  It  originally 
was  written,  Woodberry  surmises,  to  his  employer's  daughter, 
Eliza  White,  though  Whitty  believes  it  was  addressed  to  his 
future  wife,  Virginia  Eliza  Clemm.  Yet  it  is  very  likely  the 
poem  was  written  to  one  of  his  early  sweethearts,  Elizabeth 
Herring. 


224     THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

know  also  that  Poe  is  the  author  of  the  poem  Scenes 
from  Politian,  which  was  written  about  the  time  he 
loved  Mary.  It  was  published  in  the  Southern  Literary 
Messenger  in  December,  1835.  In  these  scenes  Poe  iden- 
tified himself  with  Politian,  who  loves  Lalage  and  asks 
her  to  fly  to  America.  "Wilt  thou  fly  to  that  Paradise?" 
he  asks  her.  The  reference  to  Politian  in  Assignation  is 
then  significant,  and  the  tears  on  the  leaf  of  the  play 
shed  by  the  lover  of  Marchesa  Aphrodite,  the  dreamer, 
were  Poe's  own  for  his  lost  Mary.  The  poet  looked  upon 
her  as  dead  to  him,  and  hence  in  a  later  version  of  the 

poem  to  her.  To  F ,  he  changes  the  title  to  To  One 

Departed;  when  he  wrote  To  One  in  Paradise  he 
looked  upon  her  as  dead.  Mary  was,  by  the  way,  a  name 
that  haunted  him,  and  in  his  Marginalia  he  advances  his 
belief  in  the  correct  theory  that  Byron's  only  real  love 
affair  was  with  Mary  Chaworth. 

I  am  not  so  dogmatic  as  to  maintain  that  in  writing  the 
Assignation  and  the  three  poems  I  mentioned,  and  the 
Politan  scenes,  his  other  earlier  loves  did  not  un- 
consciously make  themselves  felt.  Killis  Campbell  thinks 
To  One  in  Paradise  and  the  sonnet  To  Zante  were 
written  to  Miss  Royster.  Poe  may  also  have  been  think- 
ing of  the  mother  of  his  friend  who  died,  in  the  poem  To 
One  in  Paradise.  But  it  is  most  likely  that  his  love  for 
Mary  chiefly  inspired  these  poems.  They  were  certainly 
not  written  to  Virginia,  for  in  1833  she  was  only  11  years 
old. 

The  poem  to  Mary  Devereaux,  supposed  to  have  been 
written  for  a  Baltimore  paper,  may,  as  Woodberry  sur- 
mises, be  the  To  F poem,  although  it  is  not  so 

severe  as  Mary  said  the  poem  he  wrote  against  her  was. 
Either  her  memory  failed  her  as  to  the  alleged  severity  of 
the  poem,  or  the  poem  has  not  been  discovered.    A  poem 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE  225 

by  Poe  was  only  recently  unearthed  by  Prof.  J.  C. 
French,  of  Johns  Hopkins  University,  and  printed  in  the 
Dial  for  January  31,  19 18.  It  was  called  Serenade, 
and  was  published  in  the  Baltimore  Visiter,  April  20, 
1833.  The  girl  addressed  is  given  a  fictitious  name,  Ade- 
line. Whether  she  is  Mary  or  not  I  cannot  venture  to 
say  with  certainty,  but  most  likely  she  is.  It  was  pub- 
lished when  the  affair  was  probably  over,  and  may  have 
been  written  at  the  height  of  his  love  a  year  previously. 
Here  are  some  lines  from  it: 

"And  earth,  and  stars,  and  sea,  and  sky- 
Are  redolent  of   sleep  as   I 
Am   redolent  of   thee  and  thine 
Enthralling  love,  my  Adeline, 
But   list,   O   list, — so   soft  and   low 
Thy  lover's  voice  to-night  shall  flowr 
That  scarce  awake  thy  soul  shall  deem 
My  words  the  music  of  a  dream." 

The  lover  in  Assignation,  in  which  To  One  in  Para- 
dise appeared  then  is  Poe,  and  his  dreamy  character  is 
in  accordance  with  ail  the  other  self  portrayals  we  have 
of  the  poet.  The  description  of  the  Marchesa,  no  doubt, 
was  inspired  by  Mary. 

I  think  that  the  tale  of  Ligeia,  which  Poe  considered  his 
best  story,  was  unconsciously  inspired  by  Mary,  and  it 
hence  calls  for  a  new  interpretation.  It  was  published 
in  September,  1838,  two  years  after  he  married  Virginia; 
but  the  poet's  memories  still  hearken  back  to  Mary.  She 
is  the  dead  Ligeia,  and  his  wife,  Virginia,  is  the  Lady 
Rowena,  whom  the  narrator  married  after  Ligeia  died. 
The  story  of  Ligeia  was  suggested  by  a  dream.  The 
poem  The  Conqueror  Worm  did  not  originally  appear 
in  the  body  of  the  tale.  The  narrator's  memory,  we  will 
recall,  flew  back  to  the  dead  Ligeia;  he  called  her  name 


226    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

in  dreams ;  ever  after  Rowena  was  dead  he  had  a  thousand 
memories  of  Ligeia.  The  emphasis  throughout  the  tale 
on  the  love  for  the  departed  Ligeia  which  will  not  die 
shows  the  real  love  the  poet  felt  for  Mary,  about  whom 
he  was  thinking.  The  narrator  imagines  that  the  dead 
Ligeia  put  a  poison  into  the  cup  of  his  second  wife,  Lady 
Rowena,  and  that  thus  the  latter  dies.  He  then  sinks 
into  visions  of  Ligeia.  He  imagines  that  the  corpse  of  his 
wife  becomes  alive,  and  as  he  looks  at  it,  it  is  transformed 
into  "my  lost  love"  Ligeia.  In  other  words,  the  dead 
love  still  lives  and  will  not  die;  it  is  not  forgotten,  and 
haunts  the  poet,  just  as  love  for  Mary  haunted  him.  The 
quotation  from  Glanvil  that  man  does  not  yield  to  death, 
applies  as  well  to  dead  love. 

In  this  tale  we  see  then  the  unconscious  influence  which 
an  earlier  love  held  on  Poe.  It  is  a  tale  of  dead 
love  as  much  as  of  death. 

Mary  enters  into  another  famous  tale  where  her  pres- 
ence was  never  suspected,  in  Eleonora.  It  has  been 
thought  that  Eleonora  was  the  poet's  wife,  Virginia,  but 
the  tale  of  the  "Valley  of  Many  Colored  Grass"  refers 
to  the  happy  days  when  he  courted  Mary,  and  the  sad 
change  when  Eleonora  died,  that  took  place  in  the  Valley, 
describes  the  poet's  grief  when  Mary  jilted  him.  The 
story  appeared  in  1841  in  The  Gift  for  1842.  Whether 
it  was  written  before  Virginia  burst  a  blood  vessel,  in 
1841,  as  is  likely,  or  afterwards,  matters  not.  For  in 
the  tale,  which  was  certainly  written  six  years  before  Vir- 
ginia died,  the  narrator  thinks  of  a  second  marriage  after 
the  death  of  Eleonora,  and  Poe  was  surely  not  thinking 
of  a  second  marriage  in  1841.  We  recall  in  the  tale  that 
the  narrator  had  vowed  never  to  love  or  marry  again 
after  he  lost  Eleonora,  but  he  does — he  marries  Ermen- 
grade,  who  is  really  Virginia,  since  Eleonora  is  Mary.  The 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE  227 

narrator  believes  he  hears  the  voice  of  Eleonora  forgiving 
him  for  his  marriage.  The  poet  tells  us  then  in  this  tale 
that  in  spite  of  his  great  love  for  Mary  he  was  able  after 
her  rejecting  him,  still  to  care  for  and  marry  some  one 
else. 

The  strongest  passion  of  his  youth  was  Mary  and  not 
Miss  Royster.  When  he  became  engaged  later  in  life 
to  Miss  Royster  it  was  due  to  worldly  reasons,  and  he 
once  broke  the  engagement.  I  believe  that  the  fact  that 
Poe  and  his  wife  were  cousins  and  that  she  burst  a  blood- 
vessel gave  rise  to  the  theory  that  Eleonora,  who  is  a 
cousin  of  the  narrator,  was  Virginia. 

Another  earlier  tale  of  the  period  of  Assignation  and 
submitted  in  the  prize  contest  at  Baltimore,  and  hence 
written  by  1833,  is  Morella.  In  Morella,  Mary  is  still 
present  in  the  person  of  the  first  Morella,  whom  the  nar- 
rator marries  and  who  dies;  again  we  have  a  symbol  of 
Mary's  dead  love.  Morella  leaves  him  a  daughter  also 
called  Morella,  and  this  may  be  a  description  of  the  pater- 
nal feeling  Poe  entertained  at  the  time  for  Virginia,  who 
was  then  11  years  old.  In  the  tale  the  second  Morella 
also  dies. 

The  sadistic  story,  Berenice,  of  the  same  period,  also 
has  memories  of  Mary. 

These  stories  with  fanciful  names  like  Ligeia,  Eleonora, 
Morella,  Berenice  and  the  tale  Assignation  were  given 
us  by  the  poet  from  the  depths  of  his  unconscious;  love 
repressions  starting  from  the  death  of  his  own  mother  in 
infancy,  the  loss  of  his  foster  mother,  Mr.  Allan's  first 
wife,  the  grief  at  the  death  of  his  friend's  mother,  the 
quarrel  with  Mr.  Allan's  second  wife,  the  love  affairs  with 
Miss  Royster,  and  Miss  Herring,  but  especially  the  re- 
jection by  Mary  entered  into  the  influences,  which  made 
up  not  only  the  poems  and  tales  previously  mentioned, 


228    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

but  much  of  his  later  work.  He  was  neurotic  because 
he  lost  his  mother  in  infancy  and  had  many  love  disap- 
pointments. The  only  tale  where  he  gives  an  account  of 
the  love  emotions  is  in  The  Spectacles,  written  before 
or  about  1844,  and  here  he  drew  on  his  experiences,  prob- 
ably chiefly  from  memories  of  IMary. 

Now  comes  a  question  that  has  always  puzzled  his 
critics:  Why  was  the  poet  so  occupied  with  the  subject 
of  death  of  fair  ladies  or  of  depicting  a  man  bereaved  by 
the  death  of  his  love.  Many  replies  have  been  made,  but 
not  altogether  satisfactorily.  The  most  common  answer 
is  that  he  was  so  occupied  with  the  subject  because  he 
lost  his  own  wife,  Virginia.  Some  uninformed  critics  are 
of  the  belief  that  poems  like  The  Raven  and  The 
Sleeper,  tales  like  Eleonora  and  Ligeia,  were  written 
after  his  wife  died.  As  a  matter  of  fact  these,  with  the 
exception  of  The  Raven  and  possibly  Eleonora,  were 
written  even  before  Virginia  burst  a  blood-vessel.  There 
is  evidence  to  make  us  believe  that  Ulaume,  which  is 
taken  to  refer  to  the  death  of  his  wife,  was  at  least  com- 
menced before  Mrs.  Poe's  death,  in  January,  1847;  Anna- 
bel Lee  was,  however,  written  after  that  date.  Nearly  all 
of  Poe's  short  stories,  too,  had  been  published  by  that 
time.  He  was  occupied  with  the  subject  of  death  long 
before  he  married;  he  mourns  the  death  of  women 
in  Lenore,  Tamerlane,  and  The  Sleeper,  all  written 
before  he  was  twenty- two  years  old.  His  first  tales, 
Assignation,  Ligeia,  Morella,  deal  with  the  subject  of 
women's  deaths.  So  those  who  believe  that  he  may  have 
imagined  Virginia  dead  after  she  burst  a  blood-vessel,  and 
hence  wrote  as  if  she  had  died,  are  not  right.  For  all 
the  stories  of  this  nature  with  the  doubtful  exception  of 
Eleonora  were  written  before  she  burst  a  blood-vessel. 
J  he   Raven   and    The    Conqueror    Worm^    two   poems 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE  229 

occupied  with  death,  were  written  before  her  death  but 
after  her  hemorrhage. 

Poe  tells  us  in  his  Philosophy  of  Composition, — an  un- 
convincing account  of  the  origin  of  The  Raven, — that 
he  regards  the  death  of  a  beautiful  maiden  the  most  poet- 
ical and  melancholy  topic.  But  there  were  factors  that 
made  him  think  so,  and  these  were  the  deaths  of  women 
he  loved  and  the  rejections  by  girls  with  whom  he  was 
infatuated.  He  lost  his  mother  when  he  was  three  years 
old.  Mrs.  Lannard,  who  is  said  to  have  inspired  To 
Helen,  and  who  was  "the  first  pure  ideal  love  of  my 
soul"  (Poe)  died  when  he  was  fifteen.  (She  is  also 
said  to  have  inspired  The  Sleeper.)  He  lost  Mrs.  Allan, 
his  foster  mother,  to  whom  he  was  greatly  attached,  when 
he  was  twenty.  He  had  also  lost  three  sweethearts  by 
the  time  he  was  twenty-three.  These  he  looked  upon  as 
departed  or  gone  from  him.  In  the  Bridal  Ballad, 
written  probably  on  the  occasion  of  the  marriage  of  Miss 
Royster,  he  refers  to  himself  as  a  dead  lover.    The  poem 

To  F ,  To  One  in  Paradise,  and  To  Zante,  as  I 

showed,  were  most  likely  written  to  Mary,  though  he 
may  have  had  the  others  in  mind,  who  either  died  or 
were  gone  from  him.  All  this  shows  the  strong  infantile 
influences  on  Poe  in  damming  up  of  his  libido.  He  was, 
therefore,  occupied  with  the  subject  of  death  not  because 
of  Virginia's  illness  or  death,  but  because  he  lost,  before 
he  was  twenty-three,  six  girls  or  women.  His  interest  in 
the  subject  made  him  hope  death  could  be  conquered  or 
stayed,  and  hence  we  have  Ligeia  and  The  Facts  in  the 
Case  of  Valdemar.  There  is  a  philosophic  treatment  of 
death  in  The  Colloquy  of  Monos  and  Una. 


230    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 


II 


Tales  of  burial  alive,  such  as  The  Casque  of  Amontilla- 
do, The  Black  Cat,  etc.,  are  also  characteristic  of  Poe, 

What  is  the  significance  of  Poe's  interest  in  the  sub- 
ject of  burial  alive  and  in  people  who  are  guilty  of  bury- 
ing others  alive?  Very  few  people  would  probably  accept 
Freud's  theory,  but  that  master  psychologist  as  a  rule 
bases  his  theories  on  facts,  and  hence  I  will  quote  his 
views  on  the  subject.  In  a  footnote  of  his  book  on  The 
Interpretation  of  Dreams,  p.  244,  he  says:  "It  is  only  of 
late  that  I  have  learned  to  value  the  significance  of 
fancies  and  unconscious  thoughts  about  life  in  the  womb. 
They  contain  the  explanation  of  the  curious  fear  felt  by 
so  many  people  of  being  buried  alive,  as  well  as  the  pro- 
foundest  unconscious  reason  for  the  belief  in  a  life  after 
death,  which  represents  nothing  but  a  projection  into  the 
future  of  this  mysterious  life  before  birth.  The  act  of 
birth,  moreover,  is  the  first  experience  with  fear,  and  in 
this  the  source  and  model  of  the  emotion  of  fear." 

Would  Freud's  theory  not  also  account  for  Poe's  great 
gift  of  the  analysis  and  depiction  of  the  emotion  of  fear? 

Morbid  fear  or  anxiety  is  well  depicted  by  Poe, 
especially  in  his  Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher.  As  we  learn 
from  psychoanalysis,  morbid  fear  is  inhibited  sexual  de- 
sire; it  is  a  reaction  against  the  libido.  The  individual's 
sexual  impulses  incapable  of  being  repressed  strive  for 
forms  of  wish  fulfilment,  and  these  when  repugnant  are 
treated  like  something  hostile,  and  provoke  fear.  Morbid 
fear  differs  from  normal  fear  in  being  continuous  and  at- 
tributed to  a  source  which  is  not  the  real  one,  the  actual 
source  being  unconscious.  If  a  woman,  for  example,  is 
very  much  in  love  with  a  man  who  turns  out  to  be  a  vile 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE  231 

criminal,  her  love  may  become  incapable  of  being  ful- 
filled any  longer  because  of  the  part  played  by  her  moral 
sense;  shrinking  from  contemplating  her  love's  fulfilment 
with  the  man  she  really  still  loves,  she  may  develop  an 
anxiety.  This  is  only  one  of  the  innumerable  cases  of  mis- 
directed desire  that  may  cause  anxiety.  Then  there  are 
physiological  factors  responsible  also.  Dr.  Brink  has 
made  a  study  of  the  subject. 

Poe  had  himself  suffered  from  a  damming  of  the 
libido.  He  is  Roger  Usher,  and  is  describing  his  own 
morbid  fear.  One  feels  that  the  narrator  of  the  tale  pre- 
sents a  case  of  psychosis,  for  he  sees  impossible  things 
happen.  He  imagines  the  house  had  a  pestilent  vapour 
about  it.  He  tells  us  that  Roger's  condition  infected  him, 
and  that  the  wild  influences  of  Roger's  fantastic  and  im- 
pressive superstition  crept  over  him.  He  must  have  been 
deranged,  for  he  imagines  that  he  sees  Roger's  dead  sister, 
whose  coffin  had  been  screwed  down  by  them,  come  out 
of  the  vault  and  drag  Roger  to  death.  He  also  thinks  he 
sees  the  house  crumble  into  fragments  and  sink  into  the 
tarn.  Either  his  whole  narrative  is  a  hallucination  or 
only  these  few  parts  of  it  are. 

Roger  himself,  however,  is  the  real  type  of  sufferer 
from  morbid  fear.  He  has  inherited  a  peculiar  disposi- 
tion, and  no  doubt  suffered  from  repressions,  though  noth- 
ing is  said  about  this.  He  attributes  his  disease  largely 
to  anxiety  about  his  sick  sister,  Lady  Madeline,  But 
the  cause  is  in  his  unconscious.  Those  who  are  ac- 
quainted with  the  theories  of  psychoanalysis  and  the  life 
of  Poe  will  feel  that  Roger,  like  Poe,  must  have  lost  a 
mother  early,  then  the  mother  of  a  friend,  then  his  foster- 
mother.  He  also,  like  Poe,  was  no  doubt  thrice  disap- 
pointed in  love,  and  probably  also  drank.  His  symptoms 
v;ere  such  as  afflict  neurotics.    He  was  in  constant  terror 


232    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

and  felt  that  he  must  die  soon  in  some  struggle  with  fear; 
he  dreaded  the  future.  He  read  strange  books  and  im- 
agined queer  things.  His  sister  died,  and,  with  the  aid 
of  the  narrator  of  the  story,  was  buried  in  a  vault  in  the 
house.  He  soon  entertained  fancies  that  he  had  buried 
her  alive,  and  he  was  in  mortal  fear  that  she  would 
wreak  vengeance  on  him.  When  the  teller  of  the  story 
read  to  Roger  some  pages  of  a  romance,  Roger  inter- 
preted various  unrelated  actions  described  there  as  a  rend- 
ing of  her  coffin  and  the  grating  of  iron  hinges  on  her 
prison.  He  imagined  she  stood  outside,  and  then  that 
he  was  being  crushed  to  death  by  her.  And  he  died  in 
fear.  The  vision  of  his  sister  was  imaginary  with  him 
and  the  narrator  as  well,  for  Lady  Madeline  could  not 
have  escaped  from  the  screwed  down  coffin  and  the  vault, 
and  having  lain  many  days  without  food,  would  not  have 
had  strength  to  crush  her  brother  to  death.  Usher  died 
because  of  morbid  fear. 

Poe  was  a  good  delineator  of  the  neuroses.  Here  we 
have  a  picture  of  his  own  life  and  know  that  he  must 
have  experienced  some  sort  of  anxiety,  as  the  tale  is  so 
true  to  life.  He  was  only  thirty  when  the  story  was  pub- 
lished, and  the  main  character  here,  as  in  Berenice  and 
the  Assignation,  is  a  neurotic.  Behind  it  all  one  sees  the 
mourner  for  the  lost  Lenore,  the  orphan,  the  victim  of 
love  through  Stella  Royster,  Elizabeth  Herring  and  Mary 
Devereaux. 

Poe  had  also  another  trait,  and  that  was  a  sadistic  one. 
This  accounts  for  his  tales  of  people  torturing  and  being 
tortured,  as  The  Pit,  and  the  Pendulum,  and  the  Cask  of 
Amontillado.  He  was  sadistic  as  any  one  can  see  by  his 
delight  in  writing  critical  articles  calculated  to  cause 
writers  intense  pain.  He  punished  his  enemies  by  venting 
his  hatred  upon  them  in  his  essays.    He  had  an  unconsci- 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE  233 

ous  instinct  to  cause  pain  for  the  mere  sake  of  pain.  He 
hints  at  this  in  his  Imp  of  the  Perverse,  where  he  lays 
down  a  theory  which  is  undoubtedly  true,  but  which 
moralists  try  to  shun.  "I  am  not  more  certain  that  I 
breathe  than  that  the  assurance  of  the  wrong  or  error  of 
an  action  is  often  the  one  unconquerable  jorce  which 
impels  us  and  alone  impels  us  to  its  prosecution."  He 
was  also  masochistic,  he  unconsciously  liked  to  cause  pain 
to  himself.  In  his  The  Black  Cat  he  calls  perverseness 
one  of  the  primitive  impulses  of  the  human  heart,  and  he 
speaks  of  it  as  "the  unfathomable  longing  of  the  soul  to 
vex  itself — to  offer  violence  to  its  own  nature,  to  do 
wrong  for  the  wrong's  sake  only."  Poe,  as  a  child,  had 
the  sadistic  and  masochistic  instincts.  He  is  fascinated 
by  contemplation  of  suffering,  and  in  his  Premature  Burial 
speaks  of  the  pleasurable  pain  we  get  from  reading  of 
terrible  catastrophes. 

His  sadism  and  masochism  figure  considerably  in  his 
art.  He  could  not  carry  out  his  desires  to  punish  in  life, 
and  hence  found  a  refuge  in  literature.  We  often  carry 
out  in  imagination  what  we  cannot  actually  do;  and  we 
wreak  punishment  and  revenge  that  way;  if  we  are  au- 
thors we  make  books  with  such  ideas.  A  very  simple  il- 
lustration will  serve  in  Poe's  case,  yet  it  has  never  been 
noted.  In  Poe's  tale  The  Cask  of  Amontillado  the  motive 
is  revenge.  The  narrator  vowed  vengeance  upon  Fortunato, 
who  had  added  insult  to  injury.  He  buries  him  in  a  vault. 
In  his  fancy  Poe  was  punishing  a  real  enemy,  and  though 
he  had  several,  he  hated  none  more  than  the  author  of 
Alice  Ben  Bolt,  Dr.  Thomas  Dunn  English.  It  is  re- 
lated he  once  sought  the  doctor,  saying  he  wanted  to  kill 
him.  The  tale  was  published  in  Godey's  Lady's  Book  for 
November,  1846,  and  was  written  probably  a  few  months 
before.     In  July  of  that  year  Poe  published  the  savage 


234    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  1.ITERATURE 

and  violent  letter  to  English  in  retaliation  for  English's 
reply  to  a  very  hostile  article  about  him  by  Poe  in  the 
Literati.  Poe's  hatred  for  Dr.  English  is  almost  murder- 
ous. It  is  plausible  to  assume  that  a  writer  would  un- 
consciously have  his  most  bitter  antagonist  in  mind  while 
writing  a  bitter  tale  of  revenge  at  the  time  of  his  most 
intense  hatred  for  him.  Poe  was  not  satisfied  with  his 
own  savage  reply,  and  instituted  a  suit  of  damages  for 
defamation  of  character,  which  was  rewarded  with  a  ver- 
dict several  months  after  the  publishing  of  his  tale.  In 
the  story  Poe  wrote:  "I  must  not  only  punish,  but  pun- 
ish with  impunity.  A  wrong  is  unredressed  when  retri- 
bution overtakes  its  redresser."  He  calls  Fortunato  a 
quack  in  painting  and  gemmary,  as  he  had  called  Dr. 
English  a  charlatan  in  literature,  who  did  not  know  the 
rules  of  grammar.  So  this  is  an  illustration  of  how 
sadism  made  him  unconsciously  write  at  least  one  tale  of 
punishing  an  enemy  by  burying  him  alive. 

in 

After  all,  Poe  is  chiefly  the  dreamer  and  author  of 
dream  literature.  The  narrator  of  Berenice  tells  in  detail 
how  he  was  always  dreaming.  In  Assignation  the  lover 
says,  "To  dream  has  been  the  business  of  my  life.  I 
have,  therefore,  framed  for  myself  a  bower  of  dreams." 
In  Eleonora  the  narrator  says  those  who  dream  by  day 
obtain  glimpses  of  eternity.  Roger  Usher  was  a  dreamer, 
Poe's  Eureka  was  dedicated  to  those  who  dream  instead 
of  those  who  think.  He  also  wanted  to  transcend  real- 
ity. He  builded  an  ideal  landscape  in  The  Domain  of 
Arnheim  because  he  thinks  art  can  surpass  nature.  He 
hated  the  ugliness  of  to-day  and  he  tried  in  Some  Words 
with  a  Mummy  to  revive  a  mummy  to  tell  him  of  an- 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE  235 

dent  Egypt  and  to  give  him  the  secret  that  enables  one 
to  suspend  life  temporarily  and  to  be  revived  again  cen- 
turies hence.  He  says  in  an  early  poem  that  all  his  days 
have  been  a  dream.     {A  Dream  Within  a  Dream.) 

Poe  was  true  to  the  psychology  of  the  dreamer;  he  cre- 
ated things  out  of  his  fancies  to  be  as  he  would  like  them 
to  be  because  he  did  not  have  them  in  reality.  He  was 
poor  and  described  mansions  with  wonderful  furniture. 
He  was  sad  because  of  deaths  and  lost  loves  and  tried  in 
some  tales  to  conquer  death.  His  The  Raven  is  really 
an  anxiety  dream.  Fear  prompted  it,  the  fear  that  he 
would  never  be  with  his  lost  Lenore,  who  probably  was 
Mary.  She  then  inspired  this  his  most  famous  poem. 
His  characters  cannot  help  being  dreamers,  for  their  cre- 
ator was  one.  He  was  so  absorbed  in  his  dreams  that  he 
never  tried  to  take  an  interest  in  reality.  Hence  we  find 
no  moral  note  in  Poe's  work;  there  is  one  exception,  Wil- 
liam Wilson.  He  took  no  interest  in  philanthropy,  re- 
forms, transcendentalism  or  other  movements  of  the  day, 
and  he  disliked  Emerson.  One  would  never  know  from 
his  work  whether  he  lived  at  the  time  he  did  or  in  the 
eighteenth  or  twentieth  century.  One  does  not  know 
from  his  work  that  there  was  a  Mexican  war  or  a  slavery 
problem  in  his  day. 

The  one  moral  tale  Poe  wrote,  William  Wilson,  also 
has  great  value  to  the  psychoanalyst.  For  it  is  a  study 
of  emotional  conflicts  and  deals  with  the  subject  of  dual 
personality  and  anticipates  Stevenson's  famous  story, 
Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde.  Poe  is  William  Wilson,  and 
he  even  describes  his  school  days  in  England  in  the  tale. 
It  is  the  history  of  Poe's  own  struggle  with  his  uncon- 
scious, with  evil.  He  too  was  a  gambler  and  probably 
cheated  at  cards  like  William  Wilson.  There  are  two 
William  Wilsons,  one  representative  of  the  unprincipled. 


236    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

the  criminal,  the  unconscious  primitive  instincts  in  our- 
selves, and  the  other  William  Wilson  who  is  the  voice  of 
civilisation,  the  conscious  moralist  seeking  to  repress  the 
other.  Surely  this  great  tale  is  symbolic  of  man's  strug- 
gle with  his  own  conscious  which  civilisation  io  trying  to 
tame. 

So  we  leave  Poe.  Others  may  take  up  the  question  of 
his  alleged  drunkenness  and  its  overestimated  effect  on 
his  art.  But  I  have  merely  wished  to  point  a  few  things 
in  his  work  made  clear  with  the  help  of  psychoanalysis. 
Psychoanalysis  has  given  the  answer  to  those  who  ob- 
ject to  Poe  because  of  his  lack  of  moral  tone. 

It  should  be  added  that  Poe's  great  attachment  to  his 
mother-in-law,  Mrs.  Clemm,  was  due  to  the  loss  of  his 
own  mother  in  infancy. 

Poe's  devotion  and  love  for  women  of  his  later  life, 
Mrs.  Osgood,  Mrs.  Richmond,  Mrs.  Lewis,  and  especially 
Helen  Whitman,  did  not  influence  his  work  considerably 
in  spite  of  the  sufferings  they  caused  him,  but  produced 
a  few  good  single  poems  to  some  of  them,  notably,  To 
Afinie,  Mrs.  Richmond,  and  To  Helen,  Mrs.  Whitman, 
and  the  pathetic,  masterly  letters  to  these  women. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

THE  IDEAS   OF  LAFCADIO  HEARN 


Lafcadio  Hearn  anticipated  many  of  Freud's  con- 
clusions. He  understood  the  unity  of  life,  in  the  past 
with  that  in  the  present,  and  his  most  persistent  thought 
is  the  power  and  influence  of  the  emotional  life  of  our 
very  distant  ancestors  upon  our  own  lives. 

A  word  should  be  said  about  Hearn's  antecedents.  He 
has  himself  left  a  tribute  to  his  mother,  who  exerted  a 
great  influence  upon  him.  She  was  a  Greek,  though  one 
biographer,  Nina  Kennard,  conjectures  that  she  had  ori- 
ental blood.  Hearn  was  very  much  attached  to  her  and 
lost  her  when  he  was  only  six  years  old  by  his  father  di- 
vorcing her.  This  event  coloured  his  entire  life.  He 
tells  us  that  there  was  a  miniature  painting  in  oil  of  the 
Virgin  and  the  Child,  on  the  wall  of  the  room  in  which  he 
slept  as  a  child.  "I  fancied,"  he  says,  ''that  the  brown 
Virgin  represented  my  mother — whom  I  had  almost  com- 
pletely forgotten — and  the  large-eyed  child  myself."  In 
this  infantile  phantasy  we  see  how  the  repressed  love 
for  his  mother  revived  in  him  and  how  he  identified  her 
with  the  Virgin. 

He  wrote  to  his  brother:  "My  love  of  right,  my  hate 
of  wrong; — my  admiration  for  what  is  beautiful  or  true; 
— my  capacity  for  faith  in  man  or  woman; — my  sensi- 

237 


238    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

tiveness  to  artistic  things  which  gives  me  whatever  lit- 
tle success  I  have; — even  that  language-power,  whose 
physical  sign  is  in  the  large  eyes  of  both  of  us, — came 
from  her.  It  is  the  mother  who  makes  us, — makes 
at  least  all  that  makes  the  nobler  man;  not  his  strength 
or  powers  of  calculation,  but  his  heart  and  power  to 
love.  And  I  would  rather  have  her  portrait  than  a 
fortune." 

Hearn  knew  of  the  existence  of  the  unconscious  in 
the  Freudian  sense,  and  also  of  its  influence  on  author- 
ship. When  he  was  twenty-eight,  in  1878,  in  a  letter 
to  Mr.  Krehbiel  he  said:  "Every  one  has  an  inner  life 
of  his  own,— which  no  other  eye  can  see,  and  the  great 
secrets  of  which  are  never  revealed,  although  occa- 
sionally when  we  create  something  beautiful,  we  betray 
a  faint  glimpse  of  it — sudden  and  brief,  as  of  a  door 
opening  and  shutting  in  the  night."  (Life  and  Letters, 
Volume  I,  p.  196.)  ^^Unconscious  brain-work  is  the  best 
to  develop  .  .  .  latent  feeling  or  thought.  By  quietly 
writing  the  thing  over  and  over  again,  I  find  that  the 
emotion  or  idea  often  develops  itself  in  the  process, — 
unconsciously.  When  the  best  result  comes,  it  ought 
to  surprise  you,  for  our  best  work  is  out  of  the  Un- 
conscious."    (Lije  and  Letters,  Volume  i,  p.  140-141.) 

Again  Hearn  realised  that  fairy  tales  had  their  origin 
in  dreams,  an  idea  that  has  been  developed  by  Rank, 
Abraham  and  Ricklin,  disciples  of  Freud.  Hearn  saw 
that  there  was  an  intimate  connection  between  literature 
and  dreams.  He  is  one  of  the  first  men  to  have  seen 
the  relation  between  dreams  and  supernatural  litera- 
ture. The  following  passages  are  from  the  lecture  on 
"The  Supernatural  in  Literature"  in  the  second  volume 
of  Interpretation  of  Literature.  "Whether  you  believe 
in  ghosts  or  not,  all   the  artistic  elements  of  ghostly 


THE  IDEAS  OF  LAFCADIO  HEARN        239 

literature  exist  in  your  dreams,  and  form  a  veritable 
treasury  of  literary  material  for  the  man  that  knows  how 
to  use  them."  "Trust  to  your  own  dream  life;  study  it 
carefully,  and  draw  your  inspiration  from  that.  For 
dreams  are  the  primary  source  of  almost  everything  that 
is  beautiful  in  the  literature  which  treats  of  what  lies 
beyond  mere  daily  experience." 

Hearn,  with  Samuel  Butler,  is  one  of  the  great  cham- 
pions for  the  theory  about  the  power  of  unconscious 
memory  over  us.  This  idea  is  one  of  the  axioms  of 
psychoanalysis,  or  rather  one  of  its  pillars.  In  his  essay, 
"About  Ancestor  Worship"  in  Kokoro,  Hearn  develops 
his  theories  of  inherited  memory  at  length,  and  one  might 
say  that  there  is  scarcely  an  essay  of  his  that  does  not 
touch  on  the  subject.  Here  he  states  one  of  the  leading 
lessons  taught  by  psychoanalysis.  Hearn  realised  that  we 
should  not  starve  all  our  primitive  tendencies,  as  this 
would  lead  to  the  destruction  of  some  of  the  highest  emo- 
tional faculties  with  which  they  are  blended.  The  animal 
tendencies  must  be  partly  extirpated  and  partly  sub- 
limated. This  is  practically  Freud's  theory  that  neurosis 
is  produced  by  trying  to  stamp  out  our  sexual  impulses 
(yet  Freud  does  not  mean  that  we  should  give  these 
full  play).  The  following  passage  from  Hearn 's  essay 
is  part  of  the  prophylaxis  of  psychoanalysis.  "Theo- 
logical legislation,  irrationally  directed  against  human 
weaknesses,  has  only  aggravated  social  disorders;  and 
laws  against  pleasure  have  only  provoked  debaucheries. 
The  history  of  morals  teaches  very  plainly  indeed  that 
our  bad  Kami  require  some  propitiation.  The  passions 
still  remain  more  powerful  than  the  reason  in  man 
because  they  are  incomparably  older,  because  they  were 
once  all  essential  to  self-preservation, — because  they 
made  that  primal  stratum,  of  consciousness  out  of  which 


240    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

the  nobler  sentiments  have  slowly  grown.  Never  can 
they  be  suffered  to  rule;  but  woe  to  whosoever  would 
deny  their  immemorial  rights." 

He  has  a  similar  idea  in  his  essay  on  "Nirvana."  "Men- 
tal and  moral  advance  has  thus  far  been  effected  only 
through  constant  struggles  older  than  reason  or  moral 
feeling, — against  the  instincts  and  appetites  of  primi- 
tive brute  life.  .  .  .  Only  through  millions  of  births  have 
we  been  able  to  reach  this  our  present  imperfect  state; 
and  the  dark  bequests  of  our  darkest  past  are  still  strong 
enough  betimes  to  prevail  over  reason  and  ethical  feel- 
ing." 

Hearn  regarded  man  as  an  entity  of  millions  of  cells,  a 
composite  of  multiples  of  lives  carrying  out  uncon- 
sciously the  behests  of  past  ages.  Man's  instincts  are 
but  unconscious  memories  of  the  instincts  of  old.  Whit- 
man has  this  idea  in  his  Song  of  Myself,  and  Buddha 
taught  this  idea  which  Hearn  calls  "the  highest  truth 
ever  taught  to  man,"  "the  secret  unity  of  life."  Hearn 
states  the  view  fully  in  his  remarkable  essay  on  Dust. 
"All  our  emotions  and  thoughts  and  wishes,  however, 
changing  and  growing  through  the  varying  seasons  of 
life,  are  only  compositions  and  recompositions  of  the 
sensations  and  ideas  and  desires  of  other  folk,  mostly 
of  dead  people. — I  an  individual, — an  individual  soull 
Nay,  I  am  a  population — a  population  unthinkable  for 
multitude,  even  by  groups  of  a  thousand  millions!  Gen- 
erations of  generations  I  am,  aeons  of  aeons."  Or  as  he 
states  it  in  another  essay,  "Ideas  of  Pre-existence,"  in 
Kokoro:  "It  is  incontrovertible  that  in  every  individual 
brain  is  locked  up  the  inherited  memory  of  the  abso- 
lutely inconceivable  multitude  of  experiences  received 
by  all  the  brains  of  which  it  is  the  descendant."  There 
are  similar  ideas  in  Jack  London's  Star  Rover. 


THE  IDEAS  OF  LAFCADIO  HEARN        241 

Hearn  laid  emphasis  on  the  unity  of  the  past  and 
present,  a  fundamental  principle  of  psychoanalysis. 
Hearn  saw  this  idea  in  Buddhism  and  hence  became  at- 
tached to  the  philosophy  of  this  creed,  and  his  reconcilia- 
tion of  it  with  the  theory  of  evolution  is  no  mere  idle 
dream.  Leading  Buddhist  scholars  before  Hearn  saw 
the  similarity  between  the  theory  of  heredity  as  taught 
by  evolution  and  the  doctrine  of  Karma  or  transmigra- 
tion of  character.  This  doctrine  of  Karma  explains  also 
that  a  man  has  pernicious  unconquered  evil  instincts 
because  he  is  allied  to  ancestors  who  possessed  them 
strongly.  Buddhism  taught  the  theory  found  in  evo- 
lution and  psychoanalysis,  that  we  contain  in  ourselves 
every  moral  tendency  and  psychic  attribute  of  millions 
of  people  and  animals  from  whom  we  have  descended. 
We  are  full  of  shreds  of  our  ancestors'  emotions  and 
characteristics  which  are  buried  in  our  unconscious. 

II 

Why  does  Hearn  harp  on  this  idea  of  unconscious 
memory  throughout  his  work  and  in  his  correspond- 
ence? Why  was  he  attracted  to  the  question  of  the 
eternal  persistence  of  life  even  before  he  accepted  the 
philosophy  of  Buddhism.  His  pet  theory  was  that  noth- 
ing could  be  lost  in  the  universe.  In  one  of  his  finest 
essays,  "Reverie,"  in  Kotto,  he  gives  us  the  secret  of  his 
life.  He  tells  that  the  mother's  smile  will  survive  every- 
thing, for  life  can  never  disappear  finally  from  the  uni- 
verse. He  first  states  the  materialistic  position  which  as- 
sumes that  eventually  all  life  will  die  and  naught  will  be 
Jeft  of  our  labours  and  struggles,  and  then  he  gives  the 
Buddhistic  idea,  which  holds  that  nothing  is  lost  in  the 
jjniverse.     I  think  in  this  essay  we  have  the  keynote 


242    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

to  Hearn's  philosophy.  He  lost  faith  in  Christianity 
early  and  with  it  a  belief  in  the  immortality  of  the  in- 
dividual soul.  At  the  age  of  six,  he  lost  his  mother, 
whom  he  loved,  and  his  scepticism  on  the  subject  of 
immortality  made  him  feel  that  his  mother  was  gone 
from  him  eternally.  This  was  painful  to  him  and  He 
accepted  the  philosophy  of  Buddhism  as  a  solace,  for 
it  taught  something  that  was  not  repugnant  to  his 
scientific  sense;  that  life  can  never  die  out  entirely,  for 
the  universe  always  would  exist  and  even  if  life  died 
out  on  our  planet,  those  conditions  that  made  it  pre- 
vail here  would  reign  either  in  some  other  part  of  the 
universe  or  at  a  later  time.  Hence  we  all  would  con- 
tribute to  that  life  as  our  ancestors  contribute  to  our 
lives.  In  fact,  Hearn  once  wrote  he  would  not  object 
to  being  transformed  into  an  insect.  So  if  life  went  on 
forever  he  would  still  know  that  mother's  smile  he  had 
lost  in  infancy.  The  Reverie  essay  is  the  result  of  his 
CEdipus  Complex. 

In  fact,  Hearn  formulated  the  idea  of  the  Eternal 
Recurrence  in  1880  before  Nietzsche  did,  who  wept  when 
he  discovered  this  by  no  means  new  theory  in  August, 
1 88 1,  at  Silas  Maria,  6,500  feet  above  sea.  Hearn's  essay 
on  Metempsychosis  appeared  in  the  New  Orleans  Item 
and  was  included  in  a  collection  published  called  Fan- 
tastics  and  Other  Fantasies.  But  Nietzsche  became  in- 
tensely pessimistic  as  the  result  of  his  discovery,  since  it 
meant  all  life's  tragedies  would  also  recur.  Hearn,  no 
doubt,  abandoned  the  theory  as  a  literal  possibility  after 
he  read  Spencer,  but  he  retained  his  belief  in  some  of  the 
main  features  of  it. 

When  we  recall  that  Buckle,  who  was  a  free  thinker 
in  religious  matters,  still  clung  to  the  idea  of  immortality 
of  the  soul  because  he  could  not  tolerate  the  thought 


THE  IDEAS  OF  LAFCADIO  HEARN        243 

of  never  meeting  his  dead  mother;  when  we  remember 
that  scientists  like  Wallace  and  Fiske,  who  were  among 
the  pioneers  of  the  theory  of  evolution,  finally  embraced 
spiritualism  as  a  compensation  for  their  lost  faith  in 
rehgion,  it  should  not  appear  fantastic  to  trace  Heam's 
views  on  unconscious  inherited  memory  and  on  the  Bud- 
dhistic conception  of  Metempsychosis,  to  his  loss  of  both 
his  mother  and  his  religion;  for  in  his  new  belief  he 
could  meet  his  mother  and  still  not  sacrifice  his  intel- 
lect to  his  belief. 

Psychoanalysis  might  be  applied  to  other  phases  of 
Hearn's  writings, — his  interest  in  the  gruesome  and  exotic. 
It  can  explain  his  interest  in  other  races  like  the  coloured 
people  and  the  Japanese;  his  passion  for  physical  beauty 
and  his  shyness.  One  thing  that  impresses  the  lover  of 
Hearn  is  the  seeming  impersonality  of  his  work.  Yet 
though  he  says  little  of  himself  directly,  you  can  see  the 
sensitive,  half-blind  sufferer  throughout  the  work.  For 
his  ideas  studied  and  traced  to  their  source  reveal  of 
themselves  the  reasons  why  he  embraced  them. 

He  has  described  ideal  love,  such  no  doubt  as  he  must 
have  felt,  in  Karma  in  Lippincott's  Magazine,  May,  1890. 
This  story  has  been  only  recently  published  in  book  form. 

His  affinity  for  Poe  and  his  adoption  of  the  name 
The  Raven  in  his  letters  to  Mr.  Watkins  is  seen  in 
the  projecting  of  himself  upon  that  unhappy  genius 
with  whom  he  had  so  much  in  common.  He,  like  Poe, 
suffered  from  poverty,  from  following  aristocratic  tradi- 
tions in  intellectual  pursuit,  in  a  devotion  to  physical 
beauty,  in  a  love  for  French  literature,  in  an  interest  in 
extreme  suffering,  in  the  divesting  of  art  from  morals 
and  in  wandering  about  from  city  to  city. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

CONCLUSION 


The  question  now  arises,  What  effect  will  a  knowledge 
of  the  author's  unconscious  have  in  making  us  appreci- 
ate his  work  as  literature?  Does  it  matter  at  all  if 
we  know  whether  a  particular  affair  or  a  certain  woman 
inspired  a  poem  or  not?  Many  critics  protest  against 
the  kind  of  literary  criticism  that  speculates  as  to 
whether  the  heroines  celebrated  in  the  sonnets  of  Shake- 
speare or  Sidney  were  real  or  imaginary,  whether  the 
emotions  felt  by  the  poets  were  affected  or  genuine. 
These  critics  are  not  usually  inclined  to  admit  any  con- 
nection between  an  author's  life  and  his  work. 

One  of  the  great  factors  in  helping  us  understand  liter- 
ary works  is  an  acquaintance  with  some  of  the  episodes 
of  the  author's  life.  Sainte-Beuve  revolutionised  literary 
criticism  by  his  dictum  that  the  knowledge  of  an  author's 
life  helps  us  to  follow  his  work  the  better.  Dr.  Johnson 
once  said  that  he  liked  the  biographical  side  of  literature. 
Isaac  D 'Israeli,  before  Sainte-Beuve,  showed  in  his  Lit- 
erary Character  that  he  grasped  the  nature  of  the  inti- 
mate relationship  between  an  author  and  his  work. 

It  is  our  contention  that  a  literary  work  is  better  appre- 
ciated after  the  facts  about  an  author's  life  are  revealed 
to  us,  and  this  does  not  usually  happen  for  years  after  hJ5 

^41 


CONCLUSION  245 

death.  One  of  the  reasons  why  masterpieces  cannot  be 
fully  comprehended  in  an  author's  lifetime  is  because  we 
do  not  know  altogether  how  he  came  to  write  the  works 
in  question.  Shelley  and  Keats  were  not  fully  under- 
stood by  the  critics  of  their  times  not  only  because 
of  their  radical  views,  but  because  the  public  did  not 
know  the  details  of  the  poets'  relations  with  their  parents, 
and  the  women  they  loved.  How  could  a  cold,  stern  re- 
viewer find  anything  in  Epipsychidion  or  Lamia 
unless  he  was  aware  of  some  facts  about  Emilia  Viviani 
or  Fanny  Brawne?  How  was  any  fair  estimate  of  either 
of  these  poets  possible  while  the  information  that  later 
times  have  furnished  was  not  at  hand?  Many  people 
objected  when  the  letters  of  Keats  to  Fanny  Brawne 
were  published  forty  years  ago,  but  these  have  helped 
us  to  understand  that  the  cry  that  pervades  them  is 
the  same  embodied  in  music  in  the  Ode  to  Fanny,  the 
Ode  to  the  Nightingale  and  in  Lamia. 

No  true  estimate  of  a  man  is  possible  till  one  reads 
the  plaints  of  his  that  were  not  meant  for  the  public. 
We  should  not  regret  the  publication  of  the  love  let- 
ters of  the  Brownings  and  Carlyles.  Those  wonderful 
letters  are  almost  as  good  literature  as  anything  the 
authors  wrote  for  the  public.  We  are  enabled  to  see 
the  writers  in  an  entirely  different  light  from  that  in 
which  their  own  works  put  them,  and  to  understand 
these  better. 

It  was  not  possible  for  the  age  in  which  Balzac  and 
Goethe  lived,  fully  to  appreciate  them,  for  it  did  not 
have  their  published  correspondence,  and  could  not  es- 
timate the  close  connection  between  unknown  episodes 
in  their  lives  and  their  works.  I  do  not  mean  that  the 
contemporaries  of  these  poets  could  not  recognise  the 


246    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

fact  that  these  men  were  genuises,  but  they  could  not 
get  a  proper  understanding  of  them. 

In  former  times  criticism  was  busy  with  the  questions 
of  technique,  with  matters  of  rhetoric  and  grammar;  a 
writer's  work  furnished  opportunities  for  discussing  how 
near  to  old  ideas  of  authorship  the  author  approached. 
To-day  we  study  an  author  in  connection  with  his  own 
life  and  with  ours.  The  Shakespearean  criticism  of  the 
last  century  is  worth  more  than  that  of  the  two  cen- 
turies following  his  death.  Coleridge  and  Hazlitt  de- 
voted their  discussions  to  showing  how  the  great  poet 
discussed  problems  that  touched  all  of  us.  A  number  of 
studies  and  books  have  been  published  which  seek  to 
educe  his  personality  from  his  work.  I  believe  Walter 
Bagehot  was  a  pioneer  in  this  kind  of  work.  His  es- 
say on  Shakespeare — The  Man  appeared  as  early  as 
1853.  The  most  successful  venture  of  this  kind  has 
been  George  Brandes's  great  study.  Other  works  of 
this  nature  are  Frank  Harris's  The  Man  Shakespeare, 
and  The  Women  of  Shakespeare,  both  usually  re- 
garded as  fantastic,  but  nevertheless  deserving  credit  for 
their  daring,  mistaken  as  they  often  are.  Leslie  Stephen's 
and  A.  C.  Bradley's  essays  in  the  Studies  of  a  Biographer 
and  Oxford  Lectures  on  Poetry,  respectively  deserve  spe- 
cial mention.  Then  there  are  books  like  David  Masson's 
Shakespeare  Personally,  Robert  Waters's  William 
Shakespeare,  Portrayed  by  Himself,  and  Goldwin 
Smith's  Shakespeare:  The  Man.  Shakespeare's  great- 
ness can  be  recognised  though  we  knew  little  about  him, 
yet  the  keynote  of  modern  Shakespearean  criticism  is  to 
endeavour  to  see  the  connection  between  the  plays  and 
the  man. 

Comes  the  question  of  the  effect  of  psychoanalytic 
criticism  upon  our  judgment  of  living  authors.    Writers 


CONCLUSION  247 

like  George  Moore,  of  the  living,  and  Strindberg,  of  the 
recently  dead,  have  not  waited  for  posterity  to  make 
discoveries  about  their  love  affairs.  They  told  us  about 
them  frankly  in  their  autobiographical  works.  Other 
writers,  great  poets  like  Yeats  and  Symons,  have  sung 
of  their  loves  more  or  less  openly  in  their  lyrics.  When 
posterity  reads  the  biographies  of  these  last  two  poets, 
that  will  no  doubt  some  day  be  written,  it  will,  I  believe, 
learn  that  the  emotions  these  poets  expressed  in  their 
work  had  a  real  basis.  But  we  have  no  right  to  probe  into 
an  author's  private  life  while  he  is  alive;  we  may  make 
detailed  deductions  from  his  work,  but  we  should  not 
give  them  publicity.  The  reader  who  finds  the  early 
Kipling  cynical  about  women,  who  notes  Hardy  con- 
stantly reiterating  the  tragedies  caused  by  love,  may 
venture  to  guess  there  must  be  some  reason  for  this,  but 
it  would  be  a  vicious  criticism  that  made  this  topic  the 
subject  of  an  article  while  these  men  are  aUve.  One 
who  reads  Wells'  New  Machiavelli  or  Dreiser's  The 
Genius  and  observes  the  author's  preoccupation  with 
the  marriage  problem,  may  also  draw  his  own  conclusions 
about  how  much  the  fiction  is  inspired  by  reality,  but  it 
is  a  fitter  subject  for  posterity  to  take  up.  Occasion- 
ally an  author  like  Robert  Herrick  or  Upton  Sinclair 
has  his  domestic  affairs  dragged  into  the  limelight,  on 
account  of  the  sensational  interest  of  our  newspapers, 
and  the  reader  learns  that  novels  like  One  Woman's 
Life  and  Love's  Pilgrimage  were  somewhat  autobiograph- 
ical. 

There  has  been  a  great  tendency  in  our  day  on  the 
part  of  authors  to  write  autobiographical  novels.  We 
should  not  deprecate  this  tendency.  When  I  think 
that  Balzac,  Stendhal,  Flaubert  and  Zola,  Tolstoi, 
Dostoievsky  and  Turgenev,  Scott,  Dickens,  Thackeray, 


248    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

George  Eliot,  George  Meredith  and  Henry  James  were 
often  autobiographical,  I  realise  that  all  literar>  men, 
novelists  as  well  as  poets,  are  compelled  to  wear  their 
hearts  on  their  sleeves  by  virtue  of  their  art.  That  criti- 
cism which  reproached  Rousseau,  Chateaubriand,  Senan- 
cour  and  De  Musset  for  having  been  occupied  too  much 
with  themselves  is  unfair.  With  whom  else  would  the 
critics  have  the  authors  occupied?  A  man  cannot  get 
out  of  himself.  When  he  undertakes  to  write  a  book, 
he  tells  us  practically  beforehand  that  he  is  going  to 
talk  about  himself. 

Therefore,  such  excellent  novels  of  our  time  as  Jack 
London's  Martin  Eden,  Stephen  French  Whitman's  Pre- 
destined, Maugham's  0/  Human  Bondage  and  Beres- 
ford's  Invisible  Event  are  to  be  commended.  Should 
these  authors'  renown  live,  posterity  will  learn  that  some 
of  the  emotional  life  lived  by  the  characters  had  been 
experienced  by  the  authors  themselves.  It  is,  how- 
ever, not  a  matter  of  importance  whether  the  mere  in- 
cidents recorded  in  these  novels  actually  transpired  in 
the  authors'  lives. 

Many  of  us  are  so  constituted  that  we  like  to  sit 
down  with  an  author  like  Montaigne  or  Hazlitt,  who 
takes  us  into  his  confidence.  We  dislike  reticent  and 
cold  people  in  literature  as  much  as  in  life.  We  do  not 
ask  writers  to  tell  us  about  their  private  affairs,  but 
we  want  them  to  talk  at  least  indirectly  about  things 
that  are  close  to  their  heart.  And  one  may  be  sure 
they  will  interest  us.  Shakespeare  unlocked  his  heart 
to  us  in  his  sonnets  and  in  his  plays  as  well. 

It  is  of  the  world's  great  books  that  it  can  always  be 
said  as  Whitman  did  of  his  own,  "Whoso  touches  this 
book  touches  a  man." 


CONCLUSION  249 


n 

Art  and  literature  are  realities  in  themselves.  The 
depicting  of  an  event  enshrines  it  as  a  thing  of  beauty; 
the  event  itself  may  be  dull.  We  meet  Falstaffs  in  real 
life  and  waste  no  time  on  them ;  put  into  a  play  by  a  mas- 
ter, Falstaff  gives  us  an  artistic  thrill.  How  many  of  the 
people  who  enjoy  Dickens'  novels  about  humble  people 
would  be  interested  in  them  in  real  life?  Dickens's  magic 
pen  makes  us  receive  a  sensation  reading  about  them  that 
they  cannot  give  us  themselves.  It  is  the  artist's  per- 
sonality and  art  that  count. 

Gissing  and  Flaubert  wrote  about  ordinary  people  but 
they  themselves  were  intellectual  aristocrats;  they  had 
nothing  in  common  with  the  people  they  wrote  about  (ex- 
cept with  those  who  were  disguised  portraits  of  them- 
selves). In  fact,  they  despised  them;  they  personally 
were  recluses  and  merely  sympathised  with  and  were 
interested  in  the  people  they  wrote  about  as  subjects  for 
art.  If  we  had  met  Madame  Bovary  personally  and 
heard  her  tale  from  her  own  mouth,  the  effect  upon  us 
would  be  small  compared  to  that  of  the  novel. 

The  domestic  troubles  of  our  next  door  neighbours 
may  be  a  bore  to  us.  We  may  not  care  to  meet  the 
people  personally,  but  a  great  novel  or  play  describing 
the  matrimonial  difficulties  of  fictitious  characters  gives 
us  a  distinct  artistic  thrill.  The  sorrows  of  people  who 
lived  centuries  ago  move  us  more  than  those  of  people 
we  know,  because  of  the  magic  power  of  art. 

Those  who  from  time  immemorial  called  art  magical 
were  right.  Many  people  who  disparage  art  and  litera- 
ture say  to  the  writer  and  the  reader  that  they  should 
enter  the  whirlpool  of  life,  and  live  themselves.    No  ad- 


2  50    THE  EROTIC  MOTIVE  IN  LITERATURE 

vice  could  be  more  foolhardy.  To  read  beautiful  books 
about  other  people's  lives  is  itself  a  high  form  of  life, 
a  life  that  only  art  can  furnish.  It  also  has  its  advan- 
tages, when  we  think  of  the  characters  in  literature  whom 
we  enjoy  reading  about  and  yet  would  never  care  to  meet. 
Who  would  really  want  to  meet  Becky  Sharp  or  Peck- 
sniff? 

That  artistic  pleasure  we  get,  mingled  with  actual 
pain  on  account  of  the  sorrows  of  poets,  is  to  us  a  decided 
part  of  our  lives.  The  fact  that  we  are  brought  into  con- 
tact with  a  beautiful  series  of  lines  voicing  human  grief 
in  such  a  manner  that  both  our  human  and  aesthetic  emo- 
tions are  aroused,  is  a  privileged  pleasure  that  only  those 
who  can  enjoy  poetry  may  derive. 

It  does  not  follow,  however,  that  a  man  must  confine 
himself  solely  to  the  artistic  or  intellectual  life.  To 
know  of  love  only  through  books  and  not  through  ex- 
perience is  not  to  have  lived  a  full  life.  To  read  the  views 
of  Aristotle  on  friendship  and  never  to  have  had  any 
real  friendships  is  also  but  leading  an  incomplete  life. 

Literature  is  real  and  to  read  and  write  it  is  to  live. 


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